Hotel Residence Inn Paramaribo

... 8221;, he said, meaning that we ought to speak Saramacca. He told us that he is an artist and produced some jewellery that he had made. “Work is better than begging”, he said with pride. This was the second time that we had been told this by a street trader. It seems that begging, which does of course happen, is not an honourable thing to do. After a while I went in search of Ronald, who I identified through his trademark yellow towel, and soon we were ...

... plantation in the Commewijne district on the other side of the Suriname river. This was an absolute delight, the plantation has turned into a lush jungle with lots of birds, huge lizards and monkeys. The next plan is a trip into the interior of the country, but we will leave that for the next blog.

Dus tot de volgende keer dan maar weer.



Joint haiku:
Paramaribo
Gabled houses and lush palms
Laid back melting pot

... literal wake. You'd think they just invented gunpowder or something. The noise is deafening. Car alarms routinely go off from the percussion waves unleashed. Traffic stops mid-street like when the national anthem plays in Thailand. There you have to go to Chinese cemeteries on Ching Ming Day to see displays like this. But it's moved way beyond the Chinese community in Suriname now, though they still profit from sales of the red devils in their ...

... right: when I got out in Gtown I gave him G$2000 and he was happy. Stupidly I forgot to say bye to the girl. The main terminal is Stabroek market although the minivan went on after that. At Stabroek you can get taxis. Which I did. The guy had a little problem finding my friends house exactly but we got there, cost G500 though I'm not sure how far it was, took maybe 20 minutes. So I arrived at about 6.30 pm. More about Gtown's streets, sea wall, kites in the next post.

... opnieuw gaan lekken. Na het lenen van een meetklok en veel praten en sleutelen hebben we opnieuw een oorzaak te pakken. De aluminium riemschijf, die als centreer adapter moet dienen en exact op de flenzen moet passen, blijkt door de 4 bouten keurig scheef te worden getrokken op het moment dat deze wordt gemonteerd. De oorzaak is dat 2 van de 4 bouten 0,5 mm verder uit de hartlijn zitten dan de andere twee! (standaardproduct Vetus) Op het moment dat de flexibele koppeling ...

... apparently partly due to lasting bomb damage from the recent civil war. Suriname is officially a Dutch-speaking country but it seems they can't really make up their minds. Roadsigns and advertisements will occasionally be in English, other times in Dutch, and sometimes in the local amerindian dialect. Most people, impressively, seemed to be able to speak all three. A few hours later, and after being transferred ...

... and the many cultures that coexist here. I've had the opportunity to do things here that I could do no place else, for instance, searching for the rare bird, the Cock of the Rock, freeing an anaconda from a fishing net, drinking lots and lots of cassiri, (a fermented cassava beverage), eating strange and wild foods, and dressing in the traditional Amerindian loincloth and headdress. And I'm doing good work too, I think. How do I know? When people say things like this ...

Hi There Everyone: Yesterday Suriname celebrated 30 years of independence! The Surinamese love to celebrate and this was a reason to party. It started Friday. I had just arrived from Nickerie on the bus at about 4 p.m. and decided to go to Independence Square as I knew that the school children were forming the Surinamese flag on the lawn of the square. There was quite a crowd and I didn't get an ideal spot, but was able to catch glimpses. I did see "the flag ...

... last winter by another CCI participant. The plan was never completed into a workable document and since the return of the Coordinator (whose job this is)she and Brenda have been working on this. There is still work to be done in reviewing statistics on their service activities and the recommendations from which work plans need to be developed. There is a lot of disfunction in this organization. Perhaps it would be better put to say that there is a real lack of ...

... they keep gold nuggets and it is common to see men, women and even babies wearing hunks of gold around their necks. I held a baby boy about 18 months old who had a gold nugget around his neck about the size of my pinky fingernail. Dara thinks that a lot of the gold chains are not real as you can buy gold plated chains in the city cheap. Perhaps, but the nuggets are real and we were quite certain that some of the chains the women were wearing were real. Brenda has been ...