Switi Suriname Read Jetsetters Magazine at www.jetsettersmagazine.com Read this entire feature FREE with photos at http://jetsettersmagazine.com/archive/jetezine/globe02/samerica/suriname/switi/switi.html
The Isuzu mini bus approaching
stop is lime green and purple, pinstriped and airbrushed with an Asian comic-book heroine, and elaborate lettering in English, "The Thrill is Back." The driver's personal collection of digital/disco/reggae/rap music is so amplified that you feel boom of bass before you see bus coming. How fares are accounted for is a mystery; driver casually throws paper currency of Suriname guilders into a pile onto sun-heated dashboard. This is public transportation system in Paramaribo, capital of Republic of Suriname, South America.
A Saramakan Maroon cultural presentation in lobby of Krasnapolsky Hotel in Paramaribo.
Switi is Sranan Tongo for anything good. Although Dutch is official language of business and education, Sranan Tongo is common language between different ethnic groups in Suriname (Dutch Guiana until 1975). A simple language of limited vocabulary, in 17th century Sranan was no more than a contact language between first English colonists, African slaves and native Amerindians. Sranan words are therefore English-based. Luckily you needn't learn Dutch or Sranan Tongo to get around Paramaribo easily. All shopkeepers, merchants and medical people speak passable English; it's a required course in high schools.
"This is a country of tremendous variety," says a former American Ambassador to Suriname, Dennis Hays. "A country with a future. It has a small, well-educated population."
In 1667 English traded Suriname with Dutch for island of New York (the Dutch are still kicking themselves for what they see in retrospect as a bad trade). In seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Suriname flourished as a plantation colony, exporting sugar, coffee and hardwoods to Europe via Netherlands. When slavery was abolished in 1863, indentured workers were imported from India, and later from Indonesia.
Today, predominant culture is East Indian/Hindustani, with smaller percentages of Dutch, Javanese, native Amerindians and Maroons, descendents of African slaves. Most people live in coastal capital of Paramaribo. A small city of only a few hundred thousand people, population prides itself on fact that synagogue is so close to mosque that two share a parking lot.
In heyday of Dutch colonialism, streets were paved with crushed shells and lined with fragrant orange and tamarind trees. Today, streets are a mixture of cobblestones, tiles, and cement broken by roots of towering, hundred-year-old mahogany trees. They are protected because of Maroon belief that if one old, nearly-dead tree is cut down, its spirit will go about in night creating bad luck. Unfortunately this same belief doesn't seem to apply to commercial logging in rainforest - even tree spirits have their price.
The open air Centrale Markt sells sweet potatoes, cucumbers, tomatoes, garlic, peppers, potatoes, avocados, bananas, plantain, pineapples, and pumpkin. Pamplemoes, a football-sized pink grapefruit, is my favorite. Easy to peel, its big buds of sweet juice are fun to pick apart. Local vegetables people eat are amsoi, bitawiri, sopropo, and kowsbanti, a green bean that grows to two feet. A lot of chicken is sold in capital, but in interior people eat tapir, caiman, bush pig, paca, deer, monkeys and toucans.
When not drinking kasiri (homemade cassava beer), Surinamers like rum, cognac and locally-produced Parbo beer. French wines are prevalent and cheap. Everyone drinks Coca-Cola and Stroop, a sugary syrup in different flavors to which water is added, not unlike Kool-Aid.
The Suriname infrastructure, badly damaged in interior wars of mid-80s, has never fully recovered. Its signs are everywhere: rural power lines that no longer function, rusted generators, paved roads that disappear into jungle. A local businessman tells me that per capita income was $4,000 annually before independence in 1975, and approximately $800 annually today.
"In many ways Suriname is frozen in time, but that's part of its charm," says Ambassador Hays.
Historic Paramaribo has been designated by UNESCO as one of last remaining wooden structure cities in world. According to Suriname Tourism Development Assessment Guide, "Although many structures are under renovation, many other buildings, open spaces, and objects are now in decay. To date, vision of urban conservation is site specific rather than holistic - a view that has proven to be detrimental to irreplaceable historic fabric. Strengthening link between historic value and economic value will help ensure those historic structures and sites are cherished and preserved."
