Surinam, A part of my roots

Going back to Surinam for ten days after 18 years felt like going back in time, back to dynamics I recognise from my childhood, back to basic, back to the roots. I will share my experience, feelings and thoughts that arose during my ten-day holiday with my family in Paramaribo, in Surinam.

Where I come from

For the ones that do not know me, I was born and raised in the Netherlands but a part of my roots lay in Surinam. I visited the country for the first and last time when I was around 8 years old. I have been on a journey to understand where my parents and their parents come from, to understand and make peace with why I have been raised the way I have been raised and with the person that I am today. We all have parts that we like and dislike about ourselves and to understand and see where these come from helps me to make peace with who I am and feel more love for myself rather than to feel aversion when my disliked parts show. The book ‘It did not start with you’ from Mark Wolynn (I read it in Dutch), about inheriting family trauma inspired me to go this path and start asking questions. I felt very interested and curious about this part of my roots that lay in Surinam and especially about the generation of women before me.

At home in Surinam?

The moment I arrived at the airport in Surinam it felt like coming home. I am not sure if it was being surrounded by family or seeing the Amazon forest and feeling kissed by the sun, because I never considered Surinam as my home. I never realized, until seeing the country again with my own eyes, that Surinam is a third-world country. It has its beauty by having a part of the Amazon Rainforest. It has similarities to Costa Rica considering the big trees and palm trees alongside the road. Only in Surinam, it is hot and dry and there is not so much humidity.

There is also a lot of flat landscape with high grass. The flat landscape sometimes reminded me a bit of the flat Netherlands with its hectares of agriculture. Actually, something a lot of people do in Surinam is grow their own food, such as vegetables, fruits, chickens and eggs on their piece of land.

I loved to be in the garden with my grandma. Seeing the love and energy she put into her garden to grow a good harvest, as well as for my aunt who took care of all the fruit trees and cut the grass to make sure no pythons would eat us alive while working in the garden.

They inspired me to work in the garden, having my hands in the soil and not being afraid of working hard and long hours with a sun of 35 degrees on my head (I mean for the last part I need a bit more motivation). Respect! and a strong example of how physical intense work is not only for men, the grannies are rocking it as well!

It also simply felt meditative to work with the soil, planting seeds and trusting to let Mama earth do the rest. I can imagine how satisfying it feels to see the process of your hard work paying off and bringing delicious food to the table, which I was so lucky to receive from my grandma with her amazing cooking skills! I even planted my first pumpkin seeds and I am patiently waiting and feeling excited for their growth.

Anyways, you can imagine how I was looking forward to waking up early every morning to help out. I mean waking up early was easy since the sun went down at 6 pm so this ma'am laid in bed by 8 pm and woke up at 5 am (hehe don't see me doing that at home in Germany).

Painful roots

Besides the connective and meditative feelings in the garden. I have been confronted with topics that touched me and felt heavy.

Like the history of slavery (where I still have so many questions), the hierarchy between men and women, old and young, how women are openly sexualized and how it is also normalized and that security for a living can be and might be the only way for some found through sex.

The same I felt for emotional expression. In Surinam they speak Dutch. Which is the same language I speak, but what I learned is that you can speak the same language but have different meaning of words and different ways of expressing them. I was reminded that expressing difficult emotions and setting boundaries, by especially women and younger, is still not accepted everywhere. It did confront me again how impactful your environment can be on how you feel about yourself and others, especially as a child. I recognized the feeling of being one of the not-so-many people thinking and expressing openly, which made me understand why I used to feel like the grey duck when I was a child. I guess this might also comes with being and living a mix of both worlds.

Growing my own garden

I was actually, maybe even ironically, reading the book 'Come as You Are' by Emily Nagoski, during some hammock chillings in the garden, which is about the science of female sexuality. The author talks about how we all have our garden, that it is who we are. Our gardens have been filled with values, (social) rules, fears, love and with toxics, by our parents, family members and society. With growing older we get to choose what still serves us and what we need to remove from our garden to keep our soil fertile, grow healthy harvest and bloom our flowers.

This holiday has been beautiful and challenging at the same time. It has given me a reflection of what has been put in my garden, the parts that I nourish and the parts I choose to get rid of. I am thankful for all the good intentions that have been placed in my garden by also this part of my roots, and I feel grateful that I can choose to take care of my garden now and grow it the way I want to.

We can always choose to re-organise our garden and bloom fields of colorful flowers or simply pumpkins depending on what you prefer hihi.

So so lobi as we say in surinam, meaning: lots of love♥️