B&W

There's a town in Flanders called Sint Niklaas. It seems like a nice enough place for kids to grow up and grown-ups to live and work. Interesting fact, though: 11 of the 39 seats of the city council are held by the far-right party, Vlaams Belang - some anti-immigration organization (and I would love to give you more details, except I don't speak Flemish and apparently, their stuff is exclusively targeted at Flemish-speaking Flemings, which in a country like Belgium, is, erm... quite eloquent). 11 out of 39, that's a tad more than 28 percent. Respectable score.

But, you know, to hell with contradictions. The mayor of this town is a Socialist, who was elected along with a list of deputies and other aides. Among whom a man called Wouter Van Bellingen. The guy grew up in the region, adopted, like his siblings, by a local family. Elected fair and square by the people of Sint Niklaas. So now he's an "Echevin", as they call them in the old schoolness that characterizes the Belgian version of French, a deputy-mayor.

Here, like in France, all couples have to stop by city hall to get married. And part of Mr. Van Bellingen's responsibilities is to perform weddings.

To the point. Three couples refused to have him as a registrar. Why, you ask? Simple. He's black. More precisely, he is the first black man elected in Flanders.

He's had to deal with quite a bit of shit in his life. He has colorful anecdotes, such as that time where he went after a lady who'd forgotten her purse in the train and she didn't know whether to tip him, and another man told her: "you're lucky, usually they go home with it." Or these people in the street who make monkey noises when they see him.

You'd think he'd let that bring him down. I know it would me. I'd get angry and throw a dozen tantrums (I would, I have, I swear, got witnesses). No. His response? Performing a mass-wedding ceremony on March 21st, the Day Against Racism. See how they like it.

I haven't seen much about that. Expatica, Le Monde, some TV station in New Zealand... Picked that up from AFP and Reuters. It depresses me.

But you see, it's snowing tonight. Big-ass flakes. My lovely neighbor Erick cooked a hot prawn curry and got me drunk on half a bottle of white Italian wine. And that, I like. So I'm going to bed. A wide, tired smile on my face.

With tree-hugging, hippy, Scandinavian love (and thanks to the sis):