Product: Verkade Biskoewit

In the performance *Biskoewit Verkade*, Nel Lekatompessy recounts the day her parents arrived at the port of Rotterdam, the confusion, the wait for the great return, their dreams, their loneliness, their longing, and their homesickness for their homeland. Her starting point is a historic Verkade tin from Ambon (Verkade cookies were a household name in the Dutch East Indies as well!) that lay on the Zaanse quay in Zaandam around 1900, in one of the hundreds of thousands of cargo crates, waiting to be shipped to Ambon. About fifty years later, her Grandma Ne sends the same tin, filled to the brim with Verkade delicacies, back to the Netherlands by ship mail, where her son had been sent after the disbandment of the KNIL. She is worried about her grandchildren.

"Biskoewit Verkade" is about adjusting to life in an unfamiliar country, about disappointment, empty promises, the hope of returning home, waiting, homesickness, and the longing for the old, familiar, and comfortable homeland.

Nel Lekatompessy – actress/storyteller (1951),

She began in 1979 with the first Moluccan theater group, Tifa. From 1980 to 1983, she took part in directing and acting programs at STIPT (Foundation for Intercultural Theater Projects) under the guidance of the late directors Rufus Collins and Henk Tjon. In 1983, she co-founded the theater group Delta (now DeltaDua) with Anis de Jong, participating in nearly all of its theater (youth) productions. She has also appeared as a guest performer with various theater groups, including as a narrator in Jort Faber’s immersive dance performance *The Fall of Hercules* at the Westfries Museum in Hoorn. She regularly appears in films, commercials, and TV series. Most recently, in September 2024, Nel and Anis were honored with a photographic portrait in the Hall of Fame at the ITA City Theater in Amsterdam.

Before Nel Lekatompessy settled in the Zaanstreek, she lived in various camps in Zeeland and in a Moluccan neighborhood. She was born in 1951 in the Lunetten housing complex, the former Vught camp. Originally a preschool teacher but later an actress at the DeltaDua theater, she has now lived in the Zaanstreek for 50 years.