HANS & JEANNIE DEWAELE

Hans & Jeannie Dewaele

"J E A N N I E"

Here's my story ...

My maiden name is Jeannie Van Zyl. I was born in Saigon, Vietnam. I am British but of Eurasian descent and probably the closest you can get to a world resident. Ever since the end of the Vietnam war when we left Saigon I have lived in many different countries and continents. I actually lost track. I lived in Asia, the Middle East, Europe (East & West), the US, the Caribbean and South America. I regret I did not follow my father's advise to keep a diary of all the countries we lived in and visited.

Panorama of Saigon from the Saigon Trade Centre (click to enlarge) In heart and mind I will always remain Asian and cherish my Vietnamese roots. I love to go back to Saigon as regularly as our family situation permits us.

The challenge is to summarize all this in a mere few paragraphs. At the time I was born the war was raging in Vietnam. I would often visit my maternal grand mother and I went to a local Vietnamese school. My English was very poor. I remember little of the war except some bombing and that we had to hide under the kitchen table.

With the fall of Saigon, I left with my mother and toddler brother for the Philippines and from there to Bangkok where we were to meet up with my dad who had stayed behind trying to retrieve his sailing boat. He never managed to and only just got out of Saigon before its fall.

My dad then took a leave of absence and decided to sail in the Caribbean. In this time we visited many placed and lived for a short while in Haiti and Florida .

After that we moved to Tehran where we stayed for about two years until the fall of the Shah.

Then my dad took a job in Saudi Arabia, building a military base in the desert. That's when I went to boarding school in the UK. Wentworth College in Bournemouth. I didn't like the separation from my parents too much nor the strict discipline. But I have come to appreciate the good education I received there. While at school there, I had the chance to be in the care of a great foster family in Lymington when I was on leave during weekends and holidays.

After much complaining to my parents about the distance and the discipline I moved to Tasis Hellenic International School in Greece. This was a co-ed school with a much more relaxed atmosphere.

Renovated Houses along Singapore River (click to enlarge) When my parents left Saudi Arabia for Malaysia I joined them. While we lived in Johor Bahru in Malaysia, on the border with Singapore I went daily to school at the American School of Singapore until graduation from high school. In this time we also moved house from Malaysia to Singapore. After graduation I traveled to the US to stay for some time with friends of my parents in San Diego. After returning to Singapore I took an administrative job with a lawyers office.

Roofs of Grand Palace, Bangkok (click to enlarge) Then in 1986 I applied for a flight attendant's job with Saudi Arabian Airlines and moved to Jeddah for basic training, i.e. the basic 5 months training course leading to become a qualified flight attendant. My class, who all got recruited from Singapore, after training got moved to Bangkok, one of the many outside bases Saudia had and where they located their staff. It was during my training period in Jeddah that Hans and I met ...

I worked for the airline for almost three years until I moved to Jeddah after marrying Hans. And as they say ...the rest is history...

Actually, I did work for a short while in Jeddah as the personal assistant of a successful local businessman. It was quite an exception for a woman to get a job in Saudi Arabia in a commercial establishment.

Meanwhile it's been rather hectic moving around every so often as we did, to Romania, Switzerland, Algeria, Pakistan and more recently Kazakhstan.