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Outside Magazine February 2003

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The Hard Way
Up the Creek (Cont.)

IN 1997, THE SARAMAKA discovered a large Chinese logging camp in their territory. Without notifying them, the Suriname government had sold logging concessions to their land. Suriname military personnel guard these logging operations and prohibit the Saramaka from entering. The clear-cutting, like clear-cutting the world over, is devastating the land—destroying wildlife habitat, causing erosion that silts the streams, which kills the fish, and gutting a rainforest ecosystem that the Saramaka, through swidden agriculture and hunting and gathering, have maintained as a sustainable resource for 300 years.

According to witnesses, the majority of cut timber, much of it cedar, is simply bulldozed into piles and left to rot. Only the old-growth trees are trucked out, the ancient wood to be sawed into floorboards for shipping containers.

The Saramaka filed formal complaints with the Suriname government of President Ronald Venetiaan in October 1999 and October 2000 and never received a reply. In August 2002, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights issued a request to Suriname's government, including the attorney general and the minister of natural resources, asking that it "take appropriate measures to suspend all concessions, including permits and licenses for logging and mine exploration and other natural resource development activity on lands used and occupied by 12 Saramaka clans."

Cognizant of their dire situation, the Saramaka presented a detailed map of their territory (surveyed by GPS) to the government in October 2002, requesting that they be recognized as the legal and rightful owners of this land.

To date, the government has not responded. And so the logging continues, devouring, acre by acre, Saramakaland.

In the last hours of paddling before we reach Atjoni, the river is as smooth as syrup. Giant white-skinned, baobab-like trees reflect upon the dark water. The air is still, warm, wet. We have found our rhythm and paddle in harmony. Each stroke hits the water at a slightly different moment, like synchronized drumbeats.

We're gliding downriver almost in a trance when Marvin starts to sing: "One love, one heart. Let's get together and feel all right."

Marvin wails out the whole song, Frankie and I doing the refrain.

Together we sing all the Bob Marley anthems we can remember: "Buffalo Soldier," "Exodus," "Get Up, Stand Up."

We sing "Redemption Song" two times through, and then we begin to hum it, the melody sailing over the water and into the jungle.

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