I haven’t been online much the last few days so Chantal Photography is still a work in progress. And I also have some things to do regarding SB.com but hopefully I’ll be able to do some more stuff during the weekend.

The reason I haven’t been online much (only to check email and the Hanson.net forums) is that I have started working more, again. I’m now working twice as many hours as I did before, which I really enjoy especially when my paycheck comes in .

The spare time I had this week was spend cleaning house and reading a book. I just couldn’t put the book down. It’s written by Janneke Schoonhoven and it’s a true story about (part) of her life. Her two children Ammar and Sara where abducted by their father and taken to Syria. They spend two and a half years there while Janneke (with the help of others) desperately tried to get her children back to The Netherlands.

It’s astonishing to read how many organizations, including our government, have been fooled by the father and where let to believe he was a good man doing the right thing. At one point Janneke was even considered to be the bad person in all of this.

Eventually both children were brave enough to flee from their father’s apartment and go to the Dutch embassy, which wasn’t without danger and they even had to hide from their father before they could enter the embassy.
Six months they had to spend there before they could go home to their mother. It’s horrible what these children (and the family) had to go through in all those years and I hope they will be able to pick up their lives and are very happy.

I don’t know if the book has been published in English but if you can get a hold of it you should really read it. It also really makes me wonder how many families are in the same situation that we don’t know about. In the year Ammar and Sara were abducted, 120 other children where abducted by a parent / family to another country too…

Will these families ever see their children again, and shouldn’t we try to have every country sign agreements to be able to bring children home? From what I gathered reading this book, laws and regulations aren’t always (or maybe almost never) in the best interest of the children..

Plugged: Kelly, Felisa, Amber

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