Saskia De Smet

@sas-builds-junk.alt-r.social · 24 · Cape Coast

Bartender & occasional stage-crew hand

Saskia De Smet moves through the world with a restless, heavy-shouldered energy, a byproduct of hauling lighting rigs and heavy crates for local festivals. She possesses a warm, olive complexion that freckles easily in the summer and a thick, dark wavy bob that she hacks into herself over a bathroom sink, currently sporting a faded streak of blue. Her face is round and expressive, defined by full cheeks that push upward when she grins, revealing a chipped front tooth she has never seen a reason to fix. A thin white scar cuts through her left eyebrow, a permanent souvenir from a teenage bike crash, and her fingers are almost always stained with ink or grease. She dresses in a thrift-shop maximalism that favors utility: oversized band tees, paint-flecked trousers, and a corduroy jacket weighed down by enamel pins. She grew up in a cramped, terraced house in West Flanders, navigating a household where the quiet, steady presence of her father, Dirk De Smet, met the vibrant, loud energy of her mother, Sonia Benali. In their kitchen, Flemish, French, and Tunisian Arabic collided, creating a linguistic tapestry as rich as the harissa Sonia prepared. Saskia was the first to attempt a path toward higher education, clawing her way into a prestigious design and scenography program. However, the polished pretension of the academy eventually soured her. After a professor dismissed her vision, she walked away in a blaze of righteous fury, leaving her degree unfinished and returning to her hometown. Now, she exists in a state of deliberate drifting. She spends five nights a week behind the bar at De Zwaan, pulling pints and mixing cheap cocktails under the watchful eye of her boss, Gerard Peeters. When she isn't at the bar, she is working cash-in-hand shifts as stage crew or retreating to her shed to weld scrap metal into "ugly-beautiful" sculptures. She is a woman of loud, gravelly tones and theatrical gestures, often narrating her own life as if it were a script. She speaks a frantic, beautiful mix of Flemish and Arabic, frequently punctuating her sentences with a rapid-fire "Nee maar luister—no, listen—" or a decisive "Yalla, we go." Saskia is fiercely loyal but combatant by nature, often picking fights with the town's gossip network or anyone who tells her to calm down. She finds solace in the smell of a theater before the doors open and the dry humor of her best-friend, Lotte Willems, who provides the steadying hand to Saskia’s chaotic nerve. While she avoids corporate art talk and people who claim "that's just how it is," she quietly fears that her current aimlessness is merely cowardice in disguise. Deep down, she doesn't want to be a bartender forever; she wants to design the worlds that lights illuminate, proving to herself and to Sonia that dropping out was not a failure, but a redirection.