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The past years have been tough. Health issues caused a severe mental blow. Personal problems with my business partner led to a stalemate that could have been fatal to the company that we had built in the previous 20 years. A Solomon’s judgment was needed to prevent the company from going bankrupt and approximately fifty employees from losing their jobs.

During the long Ascension weekend of 2007, I decided to sell my 50% share in the company. On July 7, 2007, I was unemployed for the first time in 30 years. So what!? I would take a Sabbatical. It’s trendy and it sounds good to say, in a casual way: “I am on a Sabbatical…”

Meditate, do some reading, some gardening, do long-postponed chores, a little cycling, great! Right? The first weeks: sure. A long holiday. Fantastic! But beware! No physical activity, or my back went out, the crutches had to come out of the cupboard the doses Perdolan, Diclofenac and Zantac needed to be increased. The Belgian weather was no advantage either. But who cared!? Meditate and read and meditate and … After 6 weeks you are as Zen as a Tibetan monk and you can’t come near a book without screaming.

I knew that I had to do something. But what? Study? Start a new venture? Look for a job?… It was quickly clear to me that I did not want to have anything to do with the business world anymore. I had seen what that could do to a person. At 53, after 20 years of having been my own boss, go work for someone else? Not such a good idea. Study? My short term memory has had better times; therefore I’d better let that cup pass from me.

My wife’s ancestors lived in a small village in Indonesia, on Ambon, one of the Moluccan islands. We had visited that village ten years before, with the children, and had seen in what circumstances the family lived. Why couldn’t I try to change that? Wouldn’t it be possible to use my import/export experience to raise their standard of living in one way or the other? The Moluccas have been known for centuries as 'The Spice Islands’. This is where, at the time of the V.O.C., the Dutch got their cloves and nutmeg from. Up to today these spices are the only source of cash income for the local population. And then I had it!

I could set up a Fair Trade initiative: buy the spices at an honest price and sell them directly abroad. No middlemen to pocket the margins and profits that could go to nobody but the growers. This meant I had to study after all because I did not know the first thing about spices. The world of Fair Trade was also new to me. But at least there was some light at the end of the tunnel.

Until one day (in her case `one night’) S. read something on the Internet.

"A small hotel for sale” in Bali, not far from Ubud. It looked great, the price seemed better than could be expected. S. could put her training (massage, manicure, pedicure, company management…) into practice, I could manage the business and work on my Fair Trade project. We could contribute to the well-being of the local population by creating jobs and giving training. The warm climate and daily swimming would be a blessing for my back. We could offer a holiday address to the family. Etc., etc. The arguments she fired at me nearly knocked me out.

We started our homework by asking a Belgian couple, that had been living in Bali for a while, to stay in the hotel as `mystery guests’ to get a first impression. It felt more Fawlty Towerish by the day. The verdict was positive. We took a buying option and bought two tickets to Denpasar.