Passage by Water

Where I’m going, we don’t need roads. In fact, we don’t have any. Diitabiki has two possible modes of entry, air and water. Flying is convenient, reliable, relatively safer, faster, and only slightly more expensive than traveling by boat. Given the options and my thirst for adventure, it is surprising that I’ve flown at all.

As expected, my first boat trip to my site took a full three days. On Thursday, November 6th, I and two other volunteers in my region left early in the morning to find a van to take us to the town of Albina on the Marowijne River, which separates Suriname from French Guiana. We arrived at about noon, and though we found someone we knew, his boat was full, and there was no oil besides. So we did what we have learned to do when presented with impossible situations; we sat down and talked with people. As usual, this opened the necessary doors, and by 2 PM, we found ourselves with free passage on a boat heading our way.

The broad, dark river lined with high walls of deep green Amazon Rainforest was beautiful, as always, though very treacherous with the low water and exposed rocks in the dry season. For larger boats, such as the thirty foot dugout canoe on which we rode, the rapids presented a major challenge. At one point, we saw a boat of similar size recently capsized and a small fleet of canoes helping them salvage floating barrels and boxes of goods. The choice to leave my computer in the city was a good one.

Well after dark, we landed at a campsite along the river. The camp consisted of a tin roof with low rafters to which about thirty of us river travelers tied hammocks and hoped for few mosquitoes. At sunrise we rose, quickly stuffed our hammocks in our bags, and set off. With no traffic on the river in the morning, the dark water perfectly mirrored the jungle on the banks. We passed rugged, cantankerous looking structures on pontoons harvesting sand from the riverbed in search of gold. At the largest of the rapids, I helped the crew unload several oil drums to lower the weight of the boat as we ascended the surging water. We arrived at the first of our sites at the point where the Marowijne separates into the Tapanahony and Lawa rivers around midday Friday, spending the afternoon and evening exploring and visiting and spending the night in her house.

The next morning the two of us remaining found a boat to take us down the Tapanahony as far as the Futupassi. Gaanolo Sula is an impassable cataract on the way to Diitabiki. Travelers are forced to portage along a footpath, known as the Futupassi to continue, and this we did. For the final leg of our journey, we found a boatman from Godolo, beyond Diitabiki who brought us to our sites. I finally arrived home at about 3 PM on Saturday, November 8th, three days since we set out.

On A Mission

While I was in training, four months ago, heavy rainfall caused a major flood on the Tapanahony and Lawa rivers. As a result, the five of us in the area were unable to visit our future sites before we swore in. The Surinamese Red Cross distributed food to the area as most of the farms had been completely destroyed. While very much needed, however, the food distribution did not address the long term effects of the crop damage.

After coming to Diitabiki in August, Red Cross decided to partner with Peace Corps to assess the food situation on the Tapanahony a couple of weeks ago. We flew to the capital from our sites for a five day training on food security to help us judge the vulnerability of our communities. It was an international mission, and Red Cross workers from Belize and Jamaica joined us in Paramaribo. We also teamed up with other organizations such as the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), which had far more specific expertise and had been working in the region for a long time.

After training, we went for three days to the region. There were a few challenges, such as the Red Cross volunteer assigned to work with me spoke Dutch and Sranan Tongo, and I speak English and Aucan, but we were able to find some good information, some of which was surprising to us even after living there for three months.

Partnering with other organizations is one of the aspects of my service that makes me most excited. Even in the short time that I have been here, I have seen organizations come to my site for two or three days and leave with little long-term effect. Most development workers do have a genuine concern for the people they work with, but without the ability to spend a lot of time in one area, it is hard to make ideas stick. The hope that we have is that Peace Corps volunteers living in the hinterland can help reinforce the efforts of other organizations to make them last. As a rule, I am skeptical of the effectiveness of any development effort, but I try to do my best and keep the effectiveness of the results in mind so that I can learn about what does and does not work. Soon I hope to work more with the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), IICA, and UNICEF. We will see what we can do by working together.

A Busy Week

Peace Corps volunteers generally read a lot, even if they rarely read before their service, because the pace of life in many other countries is slower than it is in States. There was one recent volunteer in Suriname that read over three hundred books during his time in country. That’s at least three a week!

I am a reader, yet the only time I find to read is either in the early afternoons, when it is too hot to do anything else, or in the last hour before bed. Perhaps this is because there is always something to do in my village or because I just take a long time with the ordinary things of life, cooking for instance. My colleagues usually complain about having too much free time. I would almost like a little more.

Because of warden training and the Peace Corps Director’s visit to Suriname, I had only one week at site in between trips to the city. During the week, however, I had even less time than usual. On Sunday I helped a group of men clear rainforest for a building. I learned useful information about wasps and ants and how to cut Makah palms by using a forked stick to direct the thorny falling branches away for one’s head. It is actually quite impressive how quickly four people with machetes can bushwhack. I love it, and I had to be told twice when to take a break out of the afternoon sun because I go so involved hacking away. On Monday I went with one of my neighbors for a forty-five minute boat ride into the jungle to where he cuts and mills lumber. I really enjoy being on the river. In a sense, the jungle is all the same, yet there are always new things to see wherever I go. I helped carry some planks and posts with my neighbor and his sons, and he gave me a few to use on my house. All day Wednesday and Thursday, the Inter-American Development Bank hosted a seminar on Decentralization and Local Government Strengthening. It was taught in a mixture of Aucan and Dutch, which became very difficult to follow towards the ends of the days. Nevertheless, seventeen local leaders, one of them being myself, are now certified trainers in Civic Participation. While I’m in the city, I’m going to try to find an English version of the training manual, so I can help explain a few things.

Fortunately, I had all day Friday to clean and prepare for my city trip. Maybe in the city I’ll get a chance to read.

Just Another Day in the Jungle

As I have mentioned before, I did not come into the Peace Corps with the expectation, or really even the desire for the stereotypical “Peace Corps experience,” yet I have to admit, life in the rain forests of Suriname is really cool. Tourists come almost every week from Europe for a two or three day taste of life here.

I just finished sharpening my machete after a day of clearing jungle. Machetes that are well used in the bush become black, and mine is starting to turn quite dark. I can now cut down young, but rather strong trees with relatively few strokes, though it takes me longer than the people who have grown up here. I named my machete, “Durandal,” after the unbreakable sword in The Song of Roland, a medieval epic poem. Like any good sword, it rings when it strikes.

The last couple of days I have made river trips to a nearby village and a lumber site, deep in the forest. Because I live in essentially the capital of the Ndjuka, we have two means of transportation: air and river. Most villages only have the river. I love traveling on the river in dugout canoes. They are heavier, and thus, harder to paddle than aluminum, though. Eventually, I would like to buy a canoe to make my own river adventures. Rapids are very common of the Tappenahony, especially when the dry season lowers the water level. They were originally a source of defense for the Ndjuka people escaping the Dutch slave plantations in the north. It will take some time to learn to navigate the river.

My house is a one-room wooden structure with a zinc roof. The walls are very low, and the roof rises to a steep vault. The rafters structure are roughly cut young trees that remind one of a rustic lodge. It seems long and narrow because of the roof structure, though it is les than twice as long as it is wide. Because of its architecture and proximity to the rain forest, I call it, “Jungle Hall.” Since my house is so small and since the zinc conducts the sun’s heat very well, I will be spending almost all of my time outside, using the structure for sleeping, and as a storehouse for up to six months worth of food. The front of the house was originally carved and painted in traditional Ndjuka designs, but this is barely discernable now. I think the designs are beautiful, and if I cannot find someone to help me paint it thus again, I will paint it white with green trim in the spirit of the original dwelling.

In my free time I read good literature, study geography, and write.

A Note on Updates

I have been in my remote site of Diitabiki in the interior of Suriname and completely out of touch for about the last month. Usually I will be out of touch for up to three months, but recently I came down with dengue fever, so I have some time in the city. I type up blog entries in advance, however, and publish them whenever I get the chance, modifying their date stamp to the time that I wrote the article.

Pictures can be found here at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/michael.brannagan/Suriname