Each journey of bereavement is different, and few young, widowed mothers might pack their life into a Land Rover Defender and set off with a young daughter to drive through Africa for a year.
Six years after her husband was fatally stabbed on their north London doorstep by a stranger in the grip of psychosis 11 days after she gave birth to their daughter, Fleur, Nadja Ensink-Teich sets off for Cape Town next week to do just that.
Dr Jeroen Ensink, 41, a public health academic and internationally-renowned water engineer committed to improving access to water and sanitation in deprived areas, had popped out to post cards announcing the happy news of Fleur’s birth to family and friends when he was brutally killed days after Christmas in 2015. His killer was convicted of manslaughter.
In that moment, the couple’s dreams of an adventure together in Asia and Africa continuing his development projects for the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) died with him.
But, around the sixth anniversary of his death, and now living back in the Netherlands, where they were both from, Ensink-Teich, 43, spotted a sales advertisement for a fully equipped overlander Land Rover in Cape Town. “And, sometimes something pops up and you know you’ve got to go for it. So, I bought it,” she said.
From Tuesday, she and Fleur, six, will set off on an odyssey, overlanding for a year through south and east Africa, visiting projects and people Jeroen worked with in Tanzania, Mozambique, Malawi and South Africa and also travelling through Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia.
She aims to highlight the LSHTM Jeroen Ensink Memorial Fund, a scholarship set up in his name, and posting on her Instagram account Journey of a Widowed Mom The journey is also to bring Fleur closer to the essence of a father she, tragically, will never know, as well as to serve as another milestone on Ensink-Teich’s own journey of bereavement.
In doing it, she is honouring a pledge she made to herself at that darkest time after his death, to live the fullest life possible for her and her daughter, “because I know life can stop, and at any second”.
It’s not the first adventure for mother and daughter. Three years ago, after the exhausting process of Jeroen’s inquest where she found herself battling lawyers for the Metropolitan police over the circumstances leading up to the stabbing, they spent months travelling south-east Asia.
During that time she found surprising inner strength, confronting her grief, but also overcoming challenges such as relying on the kindness of strangers when she fell seriously ill, alone and incapacitated in Cambodia, but which helped her regain trust in humanity.
She spent Covid lockdowns at home in Holland writing a book, to be published by HarperCollins in September, about her personal experience. It is called ‘Dag lieverd, tot zo’ – which translated means “Bye love, see you soon” – her last words to her husband as he left their Islington flat.
It was “a super-emotional journey, to go through everything. I cried a lot”, she said. “I hope people can relate to it, so they too can see there is a life worth living.”
Lockdown was “terrifying”, she said. “The support network I had after Jeroen died, which is crucial in the healing process, just melted away. You can’t see anyone, you can’t hug anyone.” But lockdown also persuaded her, after online tutoring, that Fleur, who is fluent in three languages, would not be missing out.
“I was stopping myself with all these excuses that I shouldn’t and couldn’t do this. And it came back to: ‘I’m going to stop thinking of obstacles, and think of opportunities’. Lockdown has shown just what is possible.”
The Land Rover, nicknamed “Randy”, is equipped with tents, a kitchenette, solar panels, a water tank – everything needed to be self-sufficient. She and Fleur will travel with a female family friend, also bereaved, who has previously worked in Africa, “because I think this trip is really too big to do on my own”. She has rented out her home, and intends to continue working, as an online bereavement counsellor for widowed mothers from on the road. “All I need is an internet connection.”
When he died, Jeroen was running a project in Malawi, and they had plans to live there, or in Nepal, for a couple of years. This is her recreating that in her own way. “A year is ambitious, but that is the plan,” she said.
“It is my way to stay connected with Jeroen, with his projects, with his mission,” she said. Former colleagues and students he taught while working in Africa have already reached out to support her through the journey. She will meet so many who knew him, which is important for both her and Fleur.
“And that is a way of keeping him alive. Because people only die when you stop talking about them,” she said.
