Greeting from Paramaribo

After tons of emails of people who were asking why I didn’t update my blog and even a few guys that tried to blackmail me, I decided to follow your advice :-)

This weekend was a shocking weekend. Jerrel, a Suriname guy who’s working opposite my house invited me after 6 weeks to his moms’ place. Jerrel is a ultra-workaholic. He’s investing his time from 7 in the morning till 6 in the evening at his carwash and after 7 in the evening he’s busy as a security guard till 6 in the morning. And actually, I never got it. I mean, why should you work day and night, 7 days a week? His answer was clear: “because I don’t like to live at home.”

It’s 8 in the evening, a rainy day. With clammy jeans we’re driving the scooter on the sandy road. It’s completely dark, there are no streetlights anywhere. Every now and then a car drives by. At a small supermarket with a heavy security fence, we stop. Jerrel has to call his mom to look where we can meet. Later I will find out, that without his mom we wouldn’t ever reach the house.

Pity enough, she’s not answering the phone. So we have to drive through the small town to look if we can find her. After some time driving through holes and small pools, I hear a scream “Mama!”.

I couldn’t believe my eyes; an old lady is sitting on her knees in the heavy mud next to the road. Next to her a bag full of old Fernandes bottles. There was coming a little water out of a pipe, which she was using to fill the bottles.

We park the scooter and with a 25kg of rice, 30 liters of water and an old flashlight we start to go really off the road. There are some pieces of wood to keep your feet a bit dry. With the flashlight we look for the snakes and big holes. It’s almost a scary environment, large trees and the road looks like nobody ever walked there. His mom guides us a bit. It’s hard to prevent yourself hitting pool. After twenty minutes walking from the main road, we reach a small shed. The shed is maybe 12 square meter. Jerrel shouts his brother. A black adorable child opens the door. It reminds me of the promotion-pictures I saw lately from Unicef. He introduces himself with a big smile and big eyes.

We enter the shed, which is enlightened just with one candle melted on an old cup. Sometimes the candle gets a blow of wind and the almost fire disappears. Jerrel tells me that they’re living with 4 people here. The whole shed is fully packed with stuff. A lot of stuff that’s ready for recycling. And then the first question they ask “You like to try the Sauto I just made?”