BEFORE a tearful and welcoming reunion between Michelle Nel and her Muslim Malay father, there was anxious thoughts of how she would be accepted by him and his family.
Nel was born in 1990 to a Baster mother, Rose Maureen van Neel, and a Malaysian Muslim father, Mohamad Yasi Bin Mohamad Noor. She was raised by her single mother at Rehoboth.
At the age of 41, Noor came to Namibia and was stationed at the United Nations building in Windhoek as part of the police task force.
“I was there as a civilian police monitor. We were a part of Untag overseeing the local police force as the country moved towards independence and elections,” he told The Namibian last week.
The Untag mandate under Resolution 435 was primarily to create an environment suitable for free and fair elections for a Constituent Assembly to draft a Constitution for the new nation.
Three months after his arrival, he and his colleagues went to a local club called ‘Namibia Nite’.
“There we met a group of Namibian women and introduced ourselves, chit-chatted and danced. Michelle’s mother was with the group. A couple of days later we met them again. I spent most of the night at the club with Michelle’s mother. We began to get acquainted and I found her to be a friendly and loving person,” he said.
Noor said he felt very comfortable with her by his side.
“She was the only woman I was with until I left Namibia,” he said.
Nel’s first initiative to search for her father started in high school when she went to the Chinese embassy to enquire, but she only ended at the door and turned around.
“You know as a child it used to sadden me when I saw my friends with their fathers. That is something that I always wanted but I never tend to show it to anyone but deep down it was killing me because that was a part of me that was missing and I didn’t know how to find it,” she said.
In 2010, she started the search for her father with just a name on Facebook, but she could not find him. A part of her thought that he had died already and this ended her search.
However in 2012, her mother’s sister, aunt Meisie, told her a story of a woman who met her father through Facebook and this gave her the courage and determination to try finding her father again.
“I started the search all over again. I added anyone and everyone from Singapore and I had photos of how my father looked like but I did not want to make it public so I would just add anyone from Singapore that had the ‘Mohamad’ name although it was a very common name within the Muslim religion,” she said.
Nel waited for them to get back to her and would also go through their photos to find anyone who might have worked for the police task force in Namibia during that time.
When that proved futile, Nel asked her mother about her father’s closest friends. She found two names, Uncle Ace and Uncle Wahid and searched for them on Facebook.
Uncle Ace messaged her and she informed him that she was Noor’s daughter and was searching for him. Nel found that he was indeed alive and Uncle Ace would contact him and inform him about her since he was not on Facebook.
“So this was now a waiting process and to a certain extent I got angry because then a part of me felt like they told my dad about me and here I am coming, starting to ruin everything that is happening in their lives. Maybe I was a secret and all that,” she said.
One late afternoon while at work, Nel received an inbox from her eldest sister from her father’s side, Rozanah. She thought that she was one of those people that just wanted to be friends.
“For that whole evening, my sister and I spoke. I stayed late at work just to chat with her. She told me that my father has spoken about me to her but has not told anyone else. She also said she would create a Facebook account for him,” she recalled.
Her father sent her a friend request and they kept chatting.
“My dad is not a man with of words. He would say everything he wants to say within one text message. We exchanged numbers and started talking on WhatsApp,” she said.
The rest of the family also searched and befriended her on Facebook after they found out.
In 2015, Nel decided to go and meet her father after she was invited for her niece’s wedding.
When she arrived, she saw them in the crowd but she headed straight to the toilet after collecting her luggage. After freshening up and pushing all negative thoughts aside, she went out to meet them.
Nel was introduced to the whole family including her stepmother. They welcomed her and showed her around Singapore during her two-week stay. She also met her father’s family.
“When I saw my father, it was just love at first sight. This is my father and the person I have been loving all of my life but I just didn’t know who he was,” she said. Her father apologised for not being around and explained that he lost his contact details and could not get in touch with her.
