ALL ANTWERP XL. Lauren De Berdt lives to the rhythm of the waves in Morocco: “Unconsciously, my roads have always led here” (Antwerp)
ALL ANTWERP XL
Every weekday our reporters and photographers pick a casual passer-by off the street for a nice conversation. Want everyone has a story. And certainly in Antwerp. They have been doing this for over two years now. Some encounters linger for a long time. Because those stories deserve more attention, our reporters visited these people again for an extensive chat.
ALSO READ: “Now that my daughter is born, I feel reborn”
“Shall I show Lily-Noor? She is eight months old and completely changed.” When we met Laureen Deberdt, she was walking around the Groenplaats with an 11-week-old daughter on her stomach in the baby carrier. Now she is sitting in front of her laptop screen in the sunny south of Morocco where they want to work with Liid-Noor’s dad, Oual Bergui (27).
Oualid didn’t see his daughter for the first time until Lily-Noor was four months old. At that time, he meant in Morocco that the borders were firmly closed due to yet another corona flare-up. Oualid not in Belgium for the implementation of everything but along via video from behind his laptop. Now he walks around the house in the background with her in his arms.
bohemian style
Laureen was therefore forced to be a single mother for the first months after birth. She is happier than ever to have her family reunited in a place that means a lot to her. After showing Lily-Noor in front of the camera and introducing us to Oualid, she takes us out on the screen through the house, decorated in a bohemian and holiday style. She points to the horizon. “That’s where the ocean is, a few miles from our house. There we are any time it is, because Oualid is a surfer. Ever since he was eight.”
Laureen is bathed in the holiday atmosphere, which can be felt in the much grayer Antwerp on the other side of the screen. They therefore do not want to move back to Belgium soon. Morocco has stolen the heart of this Flemish girl.
“I was born and raised in Belgium. My mom is Belgian, my dad was Moroccan. I didn’t get to know him until I was fifteen. I was going through puberty and had an identity crisis. I didn’t know who or where my father was and was curious about the other half of me. There was a culture in me that I knew nothing about.”
(Read more below the photo)
emotional reunion
The questions to come on her thirteenth. “It ultimately takes two years to find him. My mama remembered a few names of his changes. When I happened to google the name of an aunt, I came across a kind of netlog profile. I was supposed to be studying at the time, but was distracted. Ike something in her on her pictures and message her. Immediately afterwards she gave me the number of who later turned out to be my daddy.”
Any fifteen-year-old would probably be excited to actually call that number, but not Laureen. “I called him the next day. He spoke Dutch because he had lived in Belgium for years. In the meantime he had gone back to Morocco. He had a new wife, but invited me and my mom to his home in Morocco. It was a warm and beautiful but difficult meeting. You are very vulnerable at fifteen so everything is very intense.”
The fairy tale was ultimately short-lived because eight years later, Lauren’s father died of long-term cancer. “It is still very sensitive that I had to hand it off so quickly.”
Own business
Back home, Laureen started studying journalism, but she never finished it. “I got glandular fever and then a kind of burnout. I was at home for eight months and was a bit lost. After those eight months it won’t start again so I took a leap and started my own business selling Moroccan carpets. Just because I liked it so much. I traveled there a few times for my business and it is only then that my love for Morocco really starts to grow. Business went well and I opened a shop in Reyndersstraat and then in Kloosterstraat, but I became especially popular in Morocco and was here more often than in Antwerp.”
When she wasn’t even sure if she was going to move forward with her business, Laureen booked a ten-day trip to Morocco. “I wanted to relax and think quietly in Taghazout, a surfing destination. I ended up being kept unprepared for 90 days. I was here but had traveled so much back and forth that it is not strange to be here on my special. I had my garage in Belgium emptied and I was ready to move in here.”
Surf Retreats
It was then, we are in 2019, that Laureen taught her handsome surfer. “He taught here to a family that I was also friends with. We hadn’t been together very long when I got pregnant, a happy accident.”
And so it is that Oualid, Laureen and Lily-Noor are now building a new life together in Taghazout. “We have just founded I Surf Morocco and want to offer surf lessons, retreats and tailor-made holiday packages for holidaymakers. Not a day goes by that we don’t sit on the beach with the waves. That’s something else to throw myself into. I never thought this would be my life, but I’ve been saying since I was a kid that I want to live by the ocean. The great thing about Morocco is that it is a country that pulls you out of your comfort zone. Morocco has done something to me. You slow down here, have to deliver everything and can enjoy the beautiful sunrise and sunset between the ocean and the mountains. I think my paths have unconsciously always led here.”
Although the Antwerp girl is still happy that she lived in Belgium first. “I’m glad I know the two worlds now. I’ll stay here the European girl. I don’t know how, but they see it in me. I think I was raised more free with more possibilities. I notice in Oualid that we are designed in a completely different way. I’m happy with how everything went,” she says.
“My life has always been intense, I sometimes try to stay in my comfort zone more, but I never succeed. I can’t stay in one place and keep doing one thing. I can already see that Lily-Noor has that too. She likes to travel for a long time. We are now going to focus on the surf retreats and we’ll see where we end up. Step-by-step. And when Lily-Noor is two years old. Then she can also stand on a surfboard here for the first time.”