Presenter Habtuma de Hoop returns to native Ethiopia

Klokhuis presenter Habtuma de Hoop has made a special trip to his native Ethiopia. He was reunited there with the woman who cared for him for several months as a baby. Habtuma de Hoop is presenter of the Klokhuis and councilor in the municipality of Súdwest-Fryslân. He is a real Frisian: he speaks Frisian, lives on a rural farm and in summer you can find him on the handball fields.

However, his appearance is not typically Frisian, because he has a dark complexion. Habtuma was born in Ethiopia and, when he was a few weeks old, was abandoned in a cafe in Addis Ababa. Police officers took baby Habtuma to an orphanage.

Captured

He was there for a few weeks until he ended up with a wealthy Ethiopian couple who took in and cared for orphans. When he was eight months old, Emke and Tineke de Hoop from Wommels picked him up. They adopted Habtuma through the organization Wereldkinderen. Habtuma knows nothing of his past; He got his name in the orphanage and his second name Emke comes from his Frisian father. Even his real date of birth is unknown.

Now, twenty years later, Habtuma has returned to Ethiopia with his family. A real culture shock. People who have more than fifteen children and a few cows and sheep live in small huts. In the capital Addis Adeba there are many beggars and homeless people are sleeping on the street under some cardboard.

It's like going back in time two hundred years

Habtuma de Hoop

With his brother Solomon, who was also born in Ethiopia, and his parents, Habtuma unexpectedly met the woman who took care of him and his brother. The woman, Idgi, is now eighty years old. She lived in America for a while, but has returned to Ethiopia. "That meeting was the most impressive."

Habtuma is happy that he has visited his homeland and that he has seen with his own eyes what it is like there. "I can let that go now," he says. "And actually everyone should go to a third world country once. Just to realize how good we have it in the Netherlands."

The fact that Habtuma does not know who his biological parents are and what his real date of birth is does not mean much to him: "It is the way it is".

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