Reflections on Suriname

Jennifer's Reflections

Mi kondre tru, wi lobi yu

(My country, truly we love you)

Jennifer Baarn

When I embarked on this trip I was really looking for the answer to one single question.

 “ If we as Surinamese love our country so much,  is sustaining it also part of our natural DNA”

When I was 12, my family embarked on a road trip into the interior of Suriname. As our small Honda trailed along a red dusted forest road we were swallowed by the immense rainforest.  Surrounded by darkness with a small glimmering of the abandoned sun high up in the sky, I remembered feeling both enchanted and fearful. If this is what they call mother nature, Mama Aisa, I connected to her there and then.  

I left my country when I was 15, hungry for education and a global experience, but returned frequently. With each visit I witnessed growing knowledge of self and an inflation of a common national identity. I also witnessed other things I did not understand. Patriotic symbolism flooded the streets of Paramaribo, but so did  PET bottles and everyday rubbish. In the heart of the forest, where trees and rivers harboured sacred African and AmerIndian spirits, the gold rush poisoned rivers and uprooted century old trees. So I decided to just go out there and start asking questions.

This trip revealed several things. First and foremost was the somewhat expected, yet still comforting, experience that there are numerous Surinamese champions out there who have a clear vision on natural resource use and do not take this for granted. However, their stories are not always told and leveraged as a collective. I therefore also encourage a greater exchange of knowledge and experience between some of the people we have met. The women of Kalabaskreek have never exchanged thoughts with the  woodcarvers of Pikin Slee. or the artist Dhiradj in Paramaribo. Yet there is so much they could contribute to each other’s efforts. One other observation is that greater efforts can be taken to foster a more bottom up approach. Some of the people we engaged with have been consulted on global and national environmental and social development processes, such as REDD+. However these fail to resonate the reality of the pragmatic challenges and opportunities their communities are exposed to. Through this effort we hope to encourage others to support the people in this blog to achieve their goals.

I firmly believe that development of any community first and foremost requires investments in its people and in developing a shared vision. The spirit of nature is very much alive in Suriname, I want to encourage people to not take it for granted. If yu lobi en, kor kor en, kibri en.

The narrative and reflections of my cousin and our guide Bryan Dijksteel added a much needed local perspective to our experience that made our trip so much more meaningful. Thank you bro! 

Brindusa's Reflections

The Old People Haven and Leaving Suriname

Brindusa Fidanza

Now this is the strangest of all experiences. It is now day 7 of my trip across Suriname and the last one. Tomorrow I head to Port of Spain, Trinidad, for a few days of farniente before I return to Europe. But tonight, I’m still in the Surinamese capital, Paramaribo, and I find myself sleeping in Libi Makandra an old people’s home. A very safe and clean place, though simple and certainly… unusual.

Two lines of houses face each other on the sides of an entry road with dwarf palm trees and colorful flowers. The garden is clearly well maintained, the grass is neatly cut and the flowers are aligned with care. The homes themselves look very cheerful. Tones of orange and yellow and brick red, as far as I can see in the dim light of the evening. The doors are wide and open everywhere, allowing the elderly to go in and out for those who can or simply to observe what happens outside, for those stranded in wheelchairs.

And what happens outside is… not much. The residents are calm and quiet, mostly in their chairs inside or on the porches. Nurses move around from one place to the other, administering care, helping an old lady across the street or moving things around. At the entrance of the complex, a man wearing a fluorescent vest with “Ambulance” written on the back is checking the coming and going of the few cars and people coming in and out. Most travelers would worry about finding medical support if needed; I’m in the right place.

I sure am in a quiet and safe place. Not very chearful, though. My accommodation is a container medical unit outside the administrative building. It has a hospital bed, a low bathtub and a table on wheels. I can imagine that this is a room either for someone ill in need of isolation or most likely a spare room for family visitors who live too far away to travel back home over night. I have a TV, which by the way it is the first time in Suriname. And I, too, have a little porch, with a small square wooden table and a nice, comfortable red armchair. It is from here that I am observing the place. 

A Bulgarian friend of mine – Alfred – once said that one would know if a country was developed if its children and elderly were cared for. Suriname is sadly still far from being a developed country, but this center is surely a safe haven for at least a few of its elderly; perhaps a sign that things can be better and are indeed going in the right direction.

Faja Lobi (passionate love) the national flower of Suriname

As the lights go off in the homes around me, so I prepare to sign off from the country. At 3am I will be picked up by our tireless driver Bryan and taken to the airport for my early morning flight to Port of Spain and from there back to Europe. This is where my Suriname trip ends. This country has been a surprise from day one. It sure remained a surprise until the last day of my trip. It brought me a new perspective on nature and people. It reminded me of how much more complex things are when one opens the eyes and the heart to the specificity of a place. It taught me that modesty, righteousness and optimism can go a long way, despite unfair poverty and rude inequality.

I found Suriname to be a kaleidoscope country. A large country, with relatively few inhabitants but with many different territories and natural habitats overlaid by many different cultural, religious and ethnic groups. They co-exist, mix and match here and there in various ways, from West to East and North to South. But just as the pieces of a kaleidoscope combine to form a beautiful image all while the pieces themselves remain distinct, so it is that in Suriname’s deeply entrenched differences are a sort of unspoken order by which the society abides. Here is the rice district, there is the coconut and honey district, over there the administrative capital, there is the gold district. Here are the Indians, there are the Javanese, another place are the Maroons, there are the Amerindians, and yet another place are the plantation people (of African descent, they remained on the plantations they were brought to work on, rather than flee like the Maroons did). And everywhere are the Chinese. And then even the Corantijn river at the border with Guyana in the West is very different from the Coppename river, which is in turn quite different from the Suriname river and surely (although I haven’t seen it) different from the Marowijne river which borders French Guyana at the East.

Bryan generously said one day that the past didn’t matter, and that if Surinamese people wanted to take opportunities they could, no matter where they came from. Bryan is not naïve, he works hard on several jobs and has traveled across the country extensively. He simply has a wonderful way of looking at the present and the future, an optimism shared by many of those I met. However, somehow I fear it’s not that easy. Many examples around the world have shown that culture and history are leaving deep prints into the psyches of newly independent societies. Many of them go to war – civil wars, as indeed Suriname did a couple of decades ago. The choices made by the British and the Dutch colonizers are still perpetuated in the many hardly permeable layers of the society – from ethnic to geographical to economic.

Despite the historical heritage or perhaps precisely because of the cultural mix it left behind, many communities of a variety of ethnicities are finding innovative and varied ways to develop and wish to do so sustainably. The natural beauty and the resources of the country could help it become a pearl in the region. Our road trip has uncovered only a few examples of sustainable development models, there are surely many others. People’s relationship with nature is beginning to make more sense, in many cases by bringing added value to an existing activity, in some others creating entirely new economies for communities and yet in other cases cementing tradition-old beliefs and ways of living. It is by bringing up their rich traditions and ancestral connections with nature that people can find ways to attract business and leisure travelers, to develop new industries and let shine a wonderful patchwork of cultures. 

Suriname is not there yet. But it surely is on the right journey to its roots.