Pulitzer Center Untold Stories

Suriname: On Our Way Home

Tomorrow, my dad and I will be on our way back home from Suriname. Lots of mixed emotions as we leave. Dad tonight described the trip, the time here together, as "a gift" — and it was — but there's also no denying the difficulty that Suriname faces as a country. I wish we could offer up easy solutions, but I'm afraid there are none.

Our time at Raleigh Falls was encouraging, after what we'd seen at Brownsberg. The area seems well cared for, and Harry Hunfeld, who is in charge of all building projects for STINASU, is doing a great job there. He's putting up new buildings — guest lodges and a remarkable post-and-beam park headquarters — but more importantly, he's powering the park at night off of batteries charged by solar panels during the day, instituting a recycling program, and even adding small touches like putting the ceiling fans on a timer and making outdoor lights motion sensitive. There's a lot of thought going into what they're doing there, and the forest itself is clearly in great shape.

Suriname: Of Birds and Bats at Brownsberg

About 10 AM on Monday, we were picked up by our driver for Brownsberg Nature Park, the reserve owned by STINASU to the south of Paramaribo. But our driver, a maroon man who had taken the Chrisitan name Alexander, had come in a pickup, not the van we were told to expect. It's a three-hour drive to Brownsberg — an almost impossible stretch to span without a driving rain in Suriname — so we stopped off at a local store, bought a tarp, wrapped it over our bags, and tied it down. None too soon. Less than an hour from Paramaribo, the rain began, and soon after — just after we passed Alcoa's Paranam mine — the blacktop ended and the road turned into red-clay gumbo. Alexander zigged and zagged around the deepest potholes, but by the time we arrived at Brownsberg, I felt like a paint can fresh from the mixer.

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Suriname: Tafelberg

We flew out of Paramaribo on Tuesday morning from the Zorg & Hoop airfield, the small runway within the city that mainly serves as the jumping off point for flights into the interior. Jason, our photographer, missed the flight by about fifteen minutes, but he arranged a later charter out and arrived just a few hours behind us. I don't think it was until we were in the air that I really began to understand the scale of the rainforest. We were out in the midst of it within fifteen minutes, flying just below the clouds, then going for another hour with nothing but the canopy under us for as far as the eye could see, the coffee brown Saramaca River snaking through.

Suriname: Fingers Crossed for Tafelberg

The STINASU offices. (Photo by Paul Kraaijer)

Everything, in the end, seems to have worked out with Jason Florio, our photographer. Jason managed to catch a flight to Georgetown, Guyana, and will tomorrow take a charter from Georgetown to the Zorg en Hoop airstrip (the small airfield near here) to arrive about 11 AM. As it happens, our flight leaves for Tafelberg from there at about 11 AM. Since it's a charter flight, we'll hope we can hold it until he arrives, so that we'll be able to have him along for the whole time. Our pilot, Winston Gummels, called tonight to say that he hoped Jason wouldn't be too late, because he can only hold the plane a short while before we have to go. Fingers crossed.

Complications in Suriname

Well, I was planning to sit down and write a bit of background on the little bat that we're after down here in Suriname--about the fact that only ten specimens have ever been caught (four by my dad or his teams), about the interesting rarity of this species and the delicate ecosystem of the Guiana Shield--all in preparation for talking with the local officials tomorrow at STINASU and the governmental division Nature Conservation....

Arrival in Paramaribo

We got into Suriname right on time last night, though that was almost two hours earlier than originally scheduled, thanks to the air traffic controllers strike. We were the only plane on the runway, but they still parked us on the far side of the tarmac, so we all trekked across like a string of ants toward the glowing green neon sign: "Johan Adolph Pengel Airport." We caught our shuttle outside of baggage claim and drove toward Paramaribo.

The airport, inexplicably, is a good hour's drive from the city and winds through Onverwacht and Lelydorp along the way. They look for all the world like cities on the map, but they're just wide spots in the road, and by the time we rolled through at midnight, everything was closed down--just painted concrete buildings emptied of people, a few flourescent bulbs burning through the night.