Inheritance and Task
A long thread precedes this page. It carries a conviction handed down through ten generations of educators, preachers, and pioneers: knowledge should serve freedom, dignity, and the flourishing of community. That thread crossed oceans with Huguenot forebears who reached the Cape of Good Hope in April 1686 aboard the Dutch ship Vrijheid (“freedom”), arriving at the tip of Africa, continents removed from Catholic France. It drew another line in 1995 when my parents moved our family to post-Soviet Ukraine to serve through faith, education and humanitarian work.
Woven through these journeys is a quiet Protestant habit of conscience: we question culture and man-made systems and return to the Solae—Scripture alone, Christ alone, grace alone, faith alone, to the glory of God alone. That habit formed an identity born in displacement, a citizenship of conscience stronger than birthplace. From this inheritance arises a task: to stand with the displaced, listen to minorities, notice the neglected, and help build places where learning, care, and responsibility take root.
Remember. Relearn. Rebuild.
Over the last thirty years, that inheritance has carried me across borders and back again: ten years in Ukraine, twenty in France, and then a return to Kyiv in 2024. From South Africa to Eastern Europe, from Normandy to the frontier of a new Europe, history has always pressed close.
The years 2020 and 2021 brought a crisis of a different kind. Both my mother and my daughter faced cancer diagnoses, and our family was confronted with the reality that education and faith are never abstract. They must be trauma-aware, able to carry both pain and resilience. Then in 2022, war returned to Europe, and Normandy once again became a place of refuge. Displaced victims of war crossed the same land where Allied forces had landed in 1944. We sheltered the destitute, raised funds, and I crossed the border into Ukraine twenty-five times to deliver aid. These years reshaped my understanding of education and testimony alike: they are not luxuries, but lifelines.
By 2024, I had returned to Ukraine, where classrooms continue underground, and children carry books into shelters when sirens sound. Here, on the edge of Europe, the work of memory and learning is not an academic exercise. It is survival, resistance, and the rebuilding of what war and loss try to erase.
This space is not for headlines, nor for noise. It is for witness — fragments of testimony written in the conviction that history must be remembered, lessons must be relearned, and communities must be rebuilt.
The task can be summed up in three words:
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Remember, because history must be faced honestly and those who suffered must not be forgotten.
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Relearn, because education must adapt to crisis, remain human at its core, and carry forward dignity and hope.
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Rebuild, because what has been broken can only be restored through love, respect, and faith put into practice.
Strength, as my mother reminded us through her life, is not found in noise or striving, but in stillness and trust that outlast the storm. That quiet strength — tested in history and passed through generations — continues to guide this work.
Remember. Relearn. Rebuild.
Contact
Every story joins a larger story. If you would like to connect, I invite you to reach out. Let us carry memory together, relearn what matters, and rebuild hope in community.
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