Maxia and Mikael Barfod rest against each other on a settee in their well-appointed home, occasionally exchanging an adoring and sometimes intense look as the other speaks.
To the on-looker it is clear this is a couple in tune with each other and the bond is solid. In Maxia, Mikael still sees the beauty that caught the eye of the young Danish student who spotted a striking black girl on a campus tour bus when they were both students at Kent University.
“I remember it very clearly. I was already sitting in the bus and she entered and I said to myself ‘that’s a very nice girl there. I said it is amazing that we go to the same university but I have never seen her before’.”
He wasted no time introducing himself. Maxia reminded him “you came over to me and said ‘Hello, I am Mikael.” A photo of the couple displayed prominently among family photos in the home shows a now balding Mikael, then with long hair, sitting beside an attractive Maxia.
“Although travelling in a group, whenever he got the chance to sit beside me he grabbed it,” Maxia teased.
Looking into Maxia’s eyes, Mikael said: “We were studying at the University of Essex; we were in two different departments except for one course, and the university decided we should go on a tour of all the European institutions to see them and we hopped on a bus and I saw you for the first time. You were sitting a couple of seats ahead of me. We got to know each other on the tour.” And with a warm smile she nods in agreement to his account.
Theirs was a meeting of different cultures. Mikael grew up on the small island of Zealand in Denmark where the capital Copenhagen is located. Maxia was born in Jamaica but was taken to Britain by her parents when she was just 11 years old.
After marriage they headed for Denmark, where Maxia found ready acceptance with the Barfod family. She landed a job as the trade official in the British Embassy in Copenhagen while her husband was working briefly as an economist with the Danish government.
Their life ever since has taken them to diverse parts of the globe. Mikael has worked for the United Nations in Zambia and in the Philippines. He has also worked for the European Union in Liberia and Zimbabwe, eventually returning to EU headquarters in Brussels where he remained for 19 years.
For the past year he has been in Barbados as head of the delegation of the European Union to Barbados and all the while Maxia has been at his side, the diplomatic wife and mother, supporting her husband as he carries out his ambassadorial duties.
And Mikael is sensitive to the fact and appreciates that Maxia set aside her career for her life as the wife of a diplomat.
Mikael interjects: “There is something here I would like to say because Maxi is always too modest to say. Maxi is also a student of social sciences and Maxi gives me a tremendous amount of very valuable advice when we travel around.”
“Female eyes” she says coyly. He immediately assures her “it is more than that.”
Mikael credits his wife with an academic background which amply qualifies her to be his sounding board.
“All these problems in society that we see when we go around, we notice and we discuss them and I think that is really a challenge, but it really is a help, certainly to me.” While Maxia remarked “I try to be as flexible as I can and fit in where I can.”
Every once in a while her thoughts wander back to those days when she worked as a teacher and librarian at a school back home in Brussels.
But such thoughts are fleeting. Now she is far too busy travelling with Mikael to the other Caribbean islands for which he has responsibility, as he takes a look at EU projects.
Yet she confeses to missing her former routine.
Coming to the Caribbbean, Mikael observes a difference in acceptance as a European-Caribbean couple which he said has many advantages “because people are very open towards you because you are almost bridging a gap, if ever there was one.”
The Caribbean experience however contrasts with those early days in Africa with language and to some extent cultural barriers.
As a mixed race couple, the two experienced the ugliness of racism in apartheid South Africa.
Maxia remembered: “We were turned away from hotels and restaurants, even though we had our first son who was just about a year old with us. They said ‘I am sorry but blacks are not allowed to eat here’.”
“I told Mikael let’s go because I did not want to have any problems, but Mikael said ‘no, I am a British citizen which means they should accept me’. They did not. Not a white man with a black wife.
“One of the most trying and degrading and humiliating experiences we ever had,” Mikael said with a hint of regret. “I hope that system will disappear forever. We are for obvious reasons very sensitive to racism. That is something we detect very quickly, perhaps more quickly than other people.”
He is also sensitive to the race issues highlighted from time to time in the Danish press.
“You read things in the newspapers about problems with people that are either not assimilated or being seen by the population as not being assimilated and that is in most northern European countries not getting any better and that is something that we are worried about.”
Conversely, in the Caribbean, being a mixed couple has been a distinct advantage as they go around the region presenting credentials to governors general, presidents and other political leaders.
“It projects what I am supposed to do here . . . the bond between Europe and the Caribbean.”
After a long day at work, Mikael goes home to a wife with a ready ear for reports on the kind of day he has had, prepared to engage in discussion on social and domestic issues that may have occupied his attention that day. They love to bounce things off each other.
Quality time is also shared on the weekends, said Maxia. “We love to go for long walks on the beach and we talk as we walk. We can spend forever walking and talking.”
The conversation may be about their three children: Christopher, Nicholas and Isabel, born in Zambia, Philippines and Zimbabwe. Isabel is studying in England while the two sons live in Denmark. There is no doubt they are the centre of the Barfods’ lives. Having their children visit wherever their parents are posted is the ultimate joy.
In 33 years of marriage, there is no mistaking that this couple share a love that knows no colour.
