Dimitri Leue and Samuel Vekeman make a performance about adoption. “Adopted children need a double portion of love”

Musician Samuel Vekeman was adopted from Congo as a toddler with a hereditary disease. He made a play about it with Dimitri Leue. “Ban international adoption? No, it saved my life.”

Sam Renascent is the stage name of musician and producer Samuel Vekeman (30), aka “the Antwerp reincarnation of Kanye West and Stromae”. There is a special meaning behind it. “Renascent comes from the Latin verb renascere which means 'to be reborn',” Vekeman explains. “I see my adoption as a rebirth. In Congo I might never have been able to turn my passion into a profession. Here I was given the opportunity to build a new life and I am very grateful for that.”

As a drummer and actor, Vekeman has often appeared on stage with his mentor Dimitri Leue (49). Now the duo is making a theater performance together for the first time. One of the first about adoption in Flanders, they claim. In Loos , in which actresses Clara Cleymans and Inge Paulussen also play, the life of a couple with a fervent desire to have children intertwines with that of a sister and her adopted brother, who take stock after the death of their father. Copywriter Leue talked to numerous adoptive parents and children. At what price can you tear a child away from his homeland? And can the love between parent and child ever truly transcend the blood bond?

It has become a piece that Vekeman would have liked to have seen when he was 16, to better understand why he always felt “between two worlds”. Not from here, but not from there either. When he was 2, he was given up by his parents in Kinshasa. He ended up with a warm family in the Catholic community of Sant'Egidio in Antwerp. The man who took him to Belgium by plane disappeared at the airport with the northern sun ("I was his one-way ticket to Europe"). But otherwise, Vekeman's story bears little resemblance to the abuses that made the news in the autumn, when it emerged that several Ethiopian children had not been voluntarily given up and that there were errors in their files. In anticipation of the new adoption decree, Minister of Welfare Hilde Crevits (CD&V) imposed an intercountry adoption stop .

Dimitri Leue and Samuel Vekeman have worked together before. — © Ksenia Kuleshova

Vekeman did know who his biological parents were. When he was 18, he went to visit them in Congo. “When I shouted 'maman' in the market, my adoptive mother and biological mother turned around at the same time. That was an emotional moment. It was also the first time I saw people I could physically recognize myself in. And yet they remained strangers. I wrote the song 'Familiar strangers' about that feeling.”

Your parents had three sons, but they could only put one up for adoption. Do you sometimes feel guilty that they chose you?

Vekeman : “No, because I did not make that decision. My parents may have let me go because I have sickle cell disease, a form of hereditary anemia that can be fatal and is much easier to treat in Belgium. My biological brothers are very jealous. They regularly ask me for money on Facebook. I had hoped to be able to maintain contact with my family. But as long as I feel that they don't want a real connection with me, I keep my distance.”

In the performance you ask questions about the white savior complex of Western adoptive parents to bring sick children from poor countries here .

Leue : “There is certainly something colonial about the whole adoption system. At the same time, that is difficult to maintain when you meet Samuel's parents. These are simply great people who wanted to save someone based on their Catholic charity. And that happened to be a child from Africa, because they knew a mediator who had good contacts and worked with integrity. They also deliberately adopted Samuel first, before they had children of their own. All the adoptive parents I spoke to for this project had a similar story.”

Samuel, you were born as Augy Ngoi Tambwé, but your parents gave you a Flemish name. Some adopted children find this difficult because their culture and identity are being erased. You too?

Vekeman : “No, I'm just happy that my parents have 'appropriated' me, that they see me as their real son and not as an adopted child. I can't imagine that my classmates would have had to call me Augy in grade school. Which does not mean that I do not cherish my Congolese heritage, for example my company is called Tambwé Music.”

Other than your name, you cannot physically hide your roots. “I can name all the characters of De Kampioenen , I have read The Sadness of Belgium , I know how to make bechamel sauce and yet I am still looked at as the odd one out,” says your character in Loos .

Vekeman : “Oh, yes, all those prejudices… I feel 100 percent of this, but it is other people who question that. I can give you an entire afternoon of examples of how I am always targeted by the police. Like that time when I took the train to Amsterdam, during my studies at the conservatory. According to the officer, I had bought a fake ticket. When I showed my identity card, he thought I had stolen it, because a Belgian name is not possible for a black boy, is it? Another time I was double parked on the street unloading groceries. “It's always the same with people from Angola,” I was told. How many times have you had to show all your car papers?”

Never.

Vekeman : “I have to show them as standard.”

That deep-rooted racism is one of the reasons why some argue for a ban on intercountry adoption.

Vekeman : “You can't combat shoplifting by closing all the shops, can you? That is not the right solution. I'm not against intercountry adoption at all, it saved my life. Literal. Of course the impact is enormous. I always call my adoption a blessing with a curse . I can quickly settle in somewhere and adapt like a chameleon, perhaps as a survival mechanism. But at the same time I don't feel at home anywhere. I'll have to learn to live with that. But I decided to see it as a positive force.”

Loos is a performance about adoption. — © Ksenia Kuleshova

Leue : “Look, mafia practices urgently need to be removed from the system. The fact that girls are being raped in the Philippines so that human traffickers can sell their babies. Or how they kidnap or cripple children because people with disabilities get priority for adoption. There is a need for control, control, control. But that does not necessarily mean that intercountry adoption has to be overhauled. Samuel is a top example of how it can be done successfully. Although we have to acknowledge that it has a lot to do with luck: you feel that meeting his biological parents has provided closure , while other adopted children often have to search for years for a starting point only to be left empty-handed.”

Adoption also raises the question of whether a person has the right to have a child. How do you view this as a father of three teenagers, Dimitri?

Leue : “It is very easy to abuse laws that regulate that right. If the government decides who can have children based on whether you have sufficient shelter, money and work... Where does that end? Will parents soon have to be Flemish-minded enough to be eligible? Can you have another child if someone in the family has a disability?”

“On the other hand, a parenting course doesn't seem like such a bad idea to me. Now, adoptive parents are actually the best prepared parents of anyone. For years they follow a process of psychological tests, interviews, lessons, etc. While other parents have fun for a minute and nine months later they don't know anything about it. Education is the most important thing there is, we can think about that better collectively.”

Would you adopt a child yourself?

Leue : (thinks) “I am already not there enough for my family and to restore a secure attachment, adopted children need a double dose of love. I don't think I can fulfill that commitment.”

Vekeman : “I do. Because I know how much good it can do in someone's life. You never know how it will turn out. The only thing you have control over when you adopt is that you try to be a good parent to your child.”

Loos will premiere on February 2 in De Klap (Deurne) and will play throughout Flanders until May 4. All performance dates: www.leue.be