THE FACES BEHIND ZENDERS: MONIQUE REYMER

Me in a nutshell (which is where, some would argue, I belong):

Drives small car fast, talks even faster.
Stay-at-home mum who is never at home.
Married to David Bouma, a civil engineering dam expert and recreational pilot who loves hooning in the air doing aerobatics. I hang on tightly.
Mother of four stunning children (seriously, not biased AT ALL) aged 16 – 23.
Oma to 6-month old Johan (named after our Dad) who is the CUTEST (see note above).
Self-confessed coffee-holic coffee snob.
Ex-Secondary school teacher who uses board meetings as an excuse to keep going back to school.
Studied Japanese to teach English in Japan. Go figure.
Logophile who shows off with cryptic crosswords. Seriously bad punner.
Loves pottering in the garden, pruning and preening, and giving flowers away.
Favourite pass-time – sitting in my hanging chair with a glass of wine watching the sunset, or walking on the beach.

I’d like it made clear that I am the youngest of the three sisters involved at Zenders, as if I had to tell you! While Christina is a visionary of the Zenders concept, and Teresa is the financial business brains behind the scene, I mingle in the big and the small, to-ing and fro-ing between governance decisions and doing the ironing and the arranging the flowers.

Zenders came at a time when I wanted to get back into the workforce, to have a personal challenge and get my teeth into something new, while also fulfilling a vision of having a place to gather and a connection to our Dutch heritage for my kids. For me, this was epitomized at our mother’s recent 87th birthday. With ten children, forty grandchildren and twenty great-grandies, plus partners and a few friends, there are just too many to accommodate at anyone’s home, let alone the hassle. The Zaal at Zenders was perfect, with plenty of continuous kroketten and bitterballen, room for the kids to run around, and all the hard work of cooking and cleaning up done for us! This is exactly why we embarked on this mission, to make a place to gather and connect, to mark this milestone meaningfully. It is a mission based on passion, and one I love sharing with the staff and clients who come to Zenders.