Column | Doctor Galesloot (77) is a phenomenon in Rotterdam-Zuid. Last week he retired

Doctor Jan Galesloot (Gray Piekhaar, 77) goes to the Afrikaandermarkt as little as possible. Because then he won’t get away. ‘Good morning doctor! How are you?  » The market is close to the practice where he was a general practitioner for 42 years. He gets cheese, or an apple, sometimes a cauliflower or a fish. The general practitioner is a phenomenon in Bloemhof, Hillesluis and the Afrikaanderwijk. Last week he retired.

42 years ago he ended up as an activist, young doctor with long hair, beard and mustache in Rotterdam-Zuid, with wife and three children. He was in Africa for three years and briefly in Limburg. It took some getting used to. The Rotterdam south of the Nieuwe Maas has always been rough and poor. It was once called the farmers’ side, when men from the Dutch countryside went there to deepen the ports. Then migrants from Spain, Morocco and Turkey to do heavy work.

Doctor Galesloot saw many patients who were tired and worn out in the eighties and nineties. Broken back. Broken knees. People who built the Netherlands after the war, white Rotterdammers and first generation of migrants.

Then obesity was not a big problem. Three meals a day, the Dutch prakkie of potatoes, vegetables, meat was still normal. Nobody eats that anymore. He then started to see more and more ‘lifestyle diseases’. Due to unhealthy fat and sweet food, little exercise. And a lot of stress due to little money and debts. Payed jobs, sometimes two side by side. More than prescribing medicines was explaining, explaining and explaining his work. Stop fresh and energy drinks take a daily walk, then you are already a huge step further. He thinks of the Surinamese woman who no longer needed diabetes drugs after she started living healthy.

Everyone came to Dr. Galesloot. He went on a home visit. Moroccan, Turkish, Dutch, Hindustani, Cape Verde, Eritrean, Polish, Hungarian families. Empty rooms without furniture. Or long, velvet benches with room for thirty guests. Tea, cookies, gratitude. Aggression, sadness and anger. God what has he loves the inhabitants of South, the many small things, that endless mix of cultures. Survivors. Everyone is different but with the same allergy for contempt. « If you feel better than them, then you are gone. »

Galesloot is not a fighter boss but once fought with a junk that demanded heavy painkillers, in the time of heroin addicts. Galesloot himself put him out the practice. « That incident strengthened me, I dared to say ‘no’ more often. It made me a better doctor. »

Once he almost left. Night shifts, long days and low rates, GPs broke up in poorer neighborhoods. He was able to take over a rural practice in Nieuwpoort, on the Lek. Easy patients, better paid. He already saw himself tanging a moped over the dike, doctor’s bag on the back. At the last minute he canceled. He stayed where he was at home.

Sheila Kamerman Reports somewhere from the Netherlands every week.

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