Wild Coast

by John Gimlette

  For a moment no one said anything, and I had a sense of time standing still. Then the men gathered themselves and padded away, still watching us like cats. ‘No photos,’ muttered Toon. ‘Not unless they say so.’

  With the men gone, the women came forward to gather up the freight. They wore not togas but long strips of linen. It was checked linen, I noticed (just as Captain Boston had ordered in 1762). One piece, the hangisa, fastened round the waist and was a repository for babies and knives. Another piece was tied around the breasts, with a little tail down the back. ‘Beautiful women,’ said Toon approvingly, ‘and – look – there’s one not married.’

  ‘How can you tell?’ I asked.

  ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘it’s all in the length of the tail.’

  At that moment the tribe’s guide appeared and introduced himself as Heer Nootje, or ‘Mr Nut’. He was well bellied, short and powerful, and had an enormous, wiry moustache. I don’t think he noticed how few of us there were, and began to address us as a rally. Although I’d come to enjoy Nootje eventually, I didn’t just then. As he embarked on his not very welcoming Welcome, it occurred to me that this is how Stalin would have looked if he’d been black and had worn a toga with rolled-down rubber boots, a pea-green shirt, a string of glass beads and a flat cap. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so surprised by the nonchalance of this first encounter. Here is what the American anthropologist Morton Kahn had to say about his experience of the Saramaccaners, in 1929: ‘The traveller is struck by the fact that Bush Negroes are not subservient in any degree. While they are not inhospitable, one feels one is being tolerated rather than welcomed …’

  A hint of indifference seemed to follow us upriver. It was a beautiful day, and Nootje marched us through the grass and down to the reach at Kajana. There a dugout was waiting. It was made from a single tree and was patched with tin and decorated with brass nails. Beside it sat the crew, who, when they saw us slithering down the bank, rose slowly to their feet. There were no greetings, just functional shrugs and grunts. The head boatman couldn’t even bring himself to glance at us and simply stood at the prow looking heroically detached. I noticed that, beneath his toga, he wore white canvas breeches and a cutlass. It was Toon who broke the ice, addressing him in formal Saramaccan.

  ‘U dë nö?’ he asked. Are you still alive?

  The boatman swung round sharply, and almost smiled.

  ‘U dë oh!’ Yes, he said, I’m still alive.

  The crew held out like this for almost two days, hardly acknowledging our presence. It was the same on the river. Up in the rocks we could see people scrubbing pans, and naked children casting lines and cleaning catfish. No one ever waved back; they just looked at us as though we were bad weather or hard work. Even when – later – we got to the tribes’ guesthouse, the mood was barely more than that of tolerance. The manager had left a message saying that, although he would like to have met us, he had much too much to do. That left only the cooks to register our arrival, which they did by bursting into song. Clearly, the entertaining of baccras, or whites, was the work of the women.

  Only one man seemed to like us, and he was candidly insane. Pingo, or ‘Peccary’, was one of the boatmen and had a misshapen skull and a face too small for his tongue. Although he couldn’t speak, he was lavishly affectionate, and for some reason I became his favourite. He was always finding me giant ants and caterpillars, and one day he brought me a magnificent skull, which had once belonged to a tapir. I liked the idea that he was the only Saramaccan who’d ever forgiven the whites. For everyone else the disdain was congenital, and patata-men were now eternally malevolent. It was impossible to see them in any other way – except, of course, through the prism of insanity.

  The little Africa created by Captain Zam-Zam and others is still a world of secrecy and refuge. Apart from the children and the pot-washers, we could see little from the river. Occasionally we might glimpse a cluster of canoes, with their tiny, spear-shaped oars, or an archway made of leaves, but then the water would catch our keel and hurl us back into the currents. The trees gave nothing away, except the steely squeal of insects. Once we saw a sloth, like a sniper in the branches, and another time there was an explosion of blue sparks, which turned out to be kingfishers, scattering over the water. I began to wonder what had happened to the villages marked on my map.

  ‘They’re all around,’ said Nootje, ‘you just need to look.’

  After that, he started shouting names at the shadows. Some way back was Logolio, he said, the only Christian village, but this was Deböö, the one that means ‘I’m Free’. Then there was Godowata (‘The Wasp Nest on the Water’), and a tall, steep bank of weeds that was supposed to be Stonhuku. Suddenly I realised that we’d just ridden through the heart of Saramaka territory and barely seen a thing. We hadn’t even spotted their fields.

  ‘They’re deep in the forest,’ said Nootje, ‘way out of sight.’

  After that I saw nothing until we reached the guesthouse, seven miles upstream. It was a pretty place called Awaradam, built on an island of granite and grass. Along one bank, under the kookoo trees, were a cluster of huts and a great hall, woven from paralu and tash. Whenever it rained, toads clambered out of the bushes and stood on the paths belting out their songs. But most of the time it was hot, and lizards held the stage. They were usually tegus – each four feet long – and would spend all day on the lawns, taxiing up and down like little airliners, waiting for their wings.

  Along one wall of my hut was a beautiful toga, behind which lived a colony of bats. At some stage during the night they’d stop squeaking, and then all I’d hear was the mesmerising rumble of water. Silly baccra huts, I thought, as I drifted off to sleep. Zam-Zam would never have built here, so open to attack.

  At dawn we were woken by a pounding sound, which Nootje said was ‘the talking drums’. The river was already busy. We could see the gunmen coming home, with a monkey or some toucans, all extravagantly dead. It was said that the maroons ate whatever their ancestors had eaten but were suspicious of creatures unique to this continent. The ocelot, for example, was associated with leprosy, and the armadillo was a god.

  ‘I’d like to see their village,’ I said.

  ‘That could be difficult,’ said Toon, ‘We’re going to need some gifts.’

  Visiting the Saramaccans has never been easy. There have always been protocols, rituals, hierarchies to be consulted and demands for penitence and presents. (Even within living memory the Dutch were still paying tribute.) At the heart of all this was the desire to be aloof. Modern anthropologists, such as Richard Price, say that their flight from slavery still defines the Saramaccans. They suffer a collective dread of re-enslavement, and so solitude is like an affirmation: we are because we’re alone. In fact, they’ve now been separated so long they don’t even speak the same Talkie-talkie, but one more tuneful and introverted, and richly suffused with old West African languages, such as Twi and Kromanti.

  When we told Nootje about our plans, he listened carefully and then made a speech. In it he stressed the need for deference and gifts, but particularly the gifts. He also said that he would have come with us, except he was far too busy. Instead, he’d find us a canoe, and a boatman called Edi. Another canoe would go on ahead to warn the village we were coming. Meanwhile we busied ourselves assembling a tribute and came up with a Hacketts shirt, a Swiss Army knife, a packet of Polos and a bottle of rum. It was a good haul, we felt, although in all probability it wouldn’t stop a war.

  We stopped first at the bank of weeds and clambered up to Stonhuku. At the top of the slope there were two paths, one for women and the other for men. Edi put us on the right path, and we set off through the forest, wondering how different a female path could be. According to Kahn, women in Saramaccan culture are like alien beings. For a start, they own everything, and – paternity being such an uncertain science – all property passes down the female line. But they’re also dangerous. A woman’s uterine fluids are potentially lethal, and during menst
ruation she cannot touch babies, skin game, clear forest, carry water or share a man’s canoe. Small wonder she has her own path.

  After ten minutes we came to another arch made of leaves.

  ‘The beginning of the village,’ said Toon.

  The arch, or azanpau, was a sort of spiritual security check. All visitors had to pass through it, and if they didn’t they were immediately suspect. Maroons, it seemed, lived in a constant state of mystical alert. Treachery was everywhere, says Price, and revenge could reappear at any moment, having lain dormant for centuries. Existence was a constant struggle to right the wrongs of the past. Even the killing of animals required atonement, and as we came to a clearing we passed the shrines built to snakes. Each was like a tiny temple, built from oil drums and furnished with old Dutch gin flasks and glasses for the ghosts. Although there is a greater being (the Gran Gadu), Edi said that all animals were sacred, particularly the caiman and the boa.

  That was as much as we ever saw of Stonhuku.

  ‘Wait here,’ said Edi, ‘while I go find the captain.’

  After fifteen minutes he returned, alone.

  ‘I have found a man who knows the basia …’

  ‘Great,’ said Toon, ‘then perhaps he can ask?’

  ‘No. The man has no authority to summon him.’

  There our visit stalled. We walked back to the river, got back in the boats and moved on to Kajana. Just as before, there were the snake-shrines and an arch, and a walk through the forest. We also came across a much larger altar, which included a crucifix mounted with a bony wooden head, and draped in shredded togas. Toon said it was hard to know what the Saramaccaners believed, because they seldom explained. When the first anthropologists arrived, people thought they were thieves who’d come to steal their stories. ‘The white man steals everything,’ said Toon, ‘even their words.’

  Then, suddenly, we were in the village. It was like being in a field of furniture. Each house was made from rattan and polished hardwood, and had tiny cupboard doors. Only the lintels were decorated, with brocades of fretted wood. Every design was a work of perfect symmetry and yet rigorously abstract. The same patterns were repeated on ladles and drums, and on elaborate combs with four-inch teeth. How could people who lived such wild, approximate lives be so geometric in their thoughts? But it wasn’t an unbroken pattern; menstruating women had their own cabinets outside the village, and the collapsed houses belonged to the dead and could never be touched again. There was also a small shop, or winkel, which sold beer, copper kettles and gaffer tape.

  ‘And this is the basia,’ said Edi formally.

  The village captain lived near a big tree, where the togas dried. He had a large radio, and through his open door I could see he’d decorated his hut with pictures of white girls, torn from a calendar. I could also see an old champagne bottle and a solar helmet hanging from a nail. The captain, meanwhile, was sitting on a large winged stool, like the one that appears on the flag of Ashanti. He didn’t move as we approached, and, although he must have been eighty, he was wearing a glossy new football shirt that seemed to shimmer in the heat. Toon greeted him in Dutch and explained that I was an Englesman. Although the captain was clearly unsure about the implications of this, he said he’d once worked in Cayenne, and so I could address him in French.

  ‘Nous avons rendu des cadeaux,’ I said.

  The captain surveyed the gifts and nodded. He apologised for not wearing his uniform but said he’d not been expecting visitors. He told me he had a brown uniform and a black cane with a silver top. He also said he was proud to have served his people and sent his greetings to Queen Beatrix. He hoped his sons would be captains too. He had eight of them, and they had all married well, although the virgins were expensive.

  ‘Voulez-vous voir les femmes dansantes?’

  I said I’d like it very much, to see the women dance.

  The captain seemed pleased, and told us to come back at sunset. There were only a few hours to wait. Meanwhile, the women assembled at the shop. The oldest of them was around seventy and the youngest about ten. I recognised some cooks from the guesthouse, and a beautiful girl whom I’d seen skinning monkeys.

  Soon everything was ready. As darkness fell, unseen drums burst into life, and the women began to dance. First, they did the Sëkëti, a secretive ritual from the days of slavery. One lot of dancers would clap a message with their hands, and the rest would reply, stamping their feet. After that, the men danced, hurling each other high in the air on a pair of parallel poles. Then the women were back, more lethal than ever. Their last dance, the Bandamba, was a display of unexpurgated sexual prowess. In perfect time to the drums, the dancers would roll their buttocks and abdomen, and thrust out their breasts. Soon even the children were drenched with sweat, but the rhythm never faltered. When Kahn saw this dance in 1927, a man was inveigled into the group and worked up into a state of ‘actual coitus’. I don’t know what this says about Saramaccan women: that they’re exploited, perhaps? Or no better than slaves? Kahn didn’t think so. Women were in charge of their sexual destiny, and a good woman had to be earned.

  After this, the talking drums throbbed away till midnight. At some stage we slipped away and returned to our canoe. It was an uneasy journey back, with the rocks sucking and gurgling, somewhere in the dark. But Edi didn’t seem to notice the night and took the rapids at full tilt. According to Nootje, only one aspect of the river worried the boatmen and that was the ogri. He described it to me once. It was like the water monkey anywhere, except this time brutally white.

  On our last day death intervened, and life on the river came to a halt. The cooks didn’t sing, the drums stopped and the hunters disappeared. Nootje turned up in satin baseball pants and a sombre waistcoat, and Edi didn’t seem to recognise us, as though we’d never met. Even Pingo picked up the mood of the day and cried like a cat.

  Nootje said that today was the funeral of an old lady.

  ‘When did she die?’ I asked.

  Nootje thought for a moment. ‘Three weeks ago.’

  ‘Three weeks …!’

  ‘Sure. We kept her preserved in oil and herbs.’

  ‘Well,’ whispered Toon, ‘it’s probably good we’re moving on.’

  All death, I learned, revives the spectre of revenge. No man’s death is natural, and the death of a woman is an insult to the accepted order. Every death is therefore a crime, reaching out from the deeds of the past. With their obsession for justice, no Saramaccaner can ignore this crime, and so each death prompts an inquiry. These days the quest is more ceremonial than forensic, but the body is still kept until it’s so putrefied that the fluids run clear. In Kahn’s time the fluids were offered to all – as a drink – and it was felt that, by his refusal, the murderer would reveal himself. Nowadays this divination takes a slightly healthier form, with the carcase merely hauled from house to house. ‘Is this the man that killed you?’ says the sorcerer, as they stop at every door. It’s a long and gruesome day.

  ‘And then what happens to the corpse?’ I asked Nootje.

  It’s buried, he said. No one ever visits it again, and the site becomes taboo.

  So it was that the river emptied, the forest fell silent and the Saramaka disappeared. Just as they had in 1762.

  But that year was not the end of the struggle. One lot of maroons may have been rendered compliant, but there was far worse to come. Ahead lay a tribe so neurotic and lethal that they would bring themselves almost to the brink of extinction. The war that they re-kindled has never truly ended, and the country that should have been paradise still shudders at their memory. By 1768 they were poised to fall on Paramaribo, perhaps the world’s most fanciful city.

  7

  PARAMARIBO

  Paramaribo is handsome, rich and populous; hitherto it has been considered by far the finest town in Guiana.

  Charles Waterton, Wanderings in South America

  All the luxuries, as well as the necessaries of life, abounded; every sense was apparently in
toxicated with enjoyment; and to use the figurative language of a sacred book, Surinam was a land that flowed with milk and honey. But this delusive felicity lasted not long …

  John Stedman, Expedition to Suriname

  I once read that sex is the most popular pastime in Suriname.

  Andrew Westoll, The River Bones

  IF I WERE TO DESIGN THE PERFECT CITY, it would be white and have a river running through it. There’d be plantations and fruit trees all around, and little canals would come seeping through the centre. There’d be no business district or overbearing banks, and nothing would be taller than a church. At the heart of it all would be a little purple fortress, like a hat full of mansions. There’d be no trains or tubes or public toilets. This would be one of the greatest cities of the eighteenth century. Everything would be built from wood and handmade bricks, and next to the fort there’d be a huge palm garden, where once an army planted beans. By day the presidential palace would glow like a wedding cake, and then by night it would turn green and flare like a planet. As for embassies, there’d be only nine, including a tiny bungalow for the entire United States. Temples, however, would spring up out of the foliage, along with stupas, pagodas and funeral ghats. There’d also be a mosque and a synagogue, huddled so close that they’d share a car park. This would not be a city of ghettos or new ideas. Over half the country would live here, and between them they’d speak over twenty different languages. Without parental consent no one could marry until the age of thirty, and it would be quite common to have giant rallies protesting at obesity. Meanwhile, the police would be called the korps politie, and would wear white gloves and ride around on bicycles. There’d also be an alligator living in the city’s pond, eating all the strays.