First Trip to the City

Paramaribo: THE city in Suriname. This weekend was Sur-17's (the 17th group of volunteers in Suriname) first chaperoned outing to the big city! Although I usually hate being coddled and treated like a child, I was grateful to have our Language teachers with us as we explored. Our teachers had the whole thing planned, from the bus fare, to which shops we would enter. It costs 1.65 SRD (suriname dollars) to take the bus from Lelydorp to Paramaribo. The current exchange rate is something like 3.3 SRD to one USD.

We were taken into a shop at which we could buy cloth for Pangi. (This is especially for the girls, since we will be wearing them pretty much all the time once we get to the interior. The guys just wear shorts and T-shirts.) Women standing behind the counter let you choose one of a million cloth patterns, then they judge your waist size by staring at it, and cut off the appropriate amount of material. My Pangi size was judged to be the "usual" 1.35 meters. If I was an industrious woman, I could now buy other materials and sew them onto my Pangi in patterns. Or at least sew a border into it. I think I will wait for someone to teach me how to do that before I attempt it.

We also walked through a giant market. People were selling all kinds of fruit and vegetables, and I was a bit overwhelmed. It is mango season, and I have yet to buy one to try it, because I am too scared to delve into the market-depths. Our teachers took us to a stand where we bought ginger beer. It was incredibly spicy. But also very refreshing. We also got some local cake from another stand. Next time I will try to buy something I have not yet tried here.

The next shop was a department store, which was surprisingly all-encompassing. The stores in Lelydorp have been pretty limited and seem to have only the cheap "made-in-china" type products. Here, though, I could have bought a pair of men's tighty whiteys with african print on them, and a border that said "clench." Jon, you are lucky I wasn't in a spending mood.

Also on our route was a bookstore. It was nicer than any of the other stores I have seen in Suriname so far. It reminded me of the Bookstore in Germany that I used to love as a kid. But in Suriname, you have to put any item you want to buy into a basket as you walk around the store. Otherwise they yell at you. The bookstore had an interesting mix of categories, separating the sections of books into languages (yes there was an english section). Unfortunately, there were no books in Saramaccan. It's not really a written language anyways. Our teacher does spell words for us to write down, but she is constantly spelling the words differently, often causing much confusion. I did buy some envelopes and a pen, though, since I managed to forget to bring more than 2 pens with me to Suriname. I don't know what I was thinking.

By the end of the day, we were thoroughly exhausted. I can hardly sit straight after all that walking and learning. (By the way, the men here like to call out to women on the street, mostly doing kissing noises and beckoning for you to join them. We are told not to respond because we might encourage them to do it more. I think it's funny when I'm with a group of people, but I could imagine it would feel a bit more threatening if I was walking alone. ) I can't wait till the day when I can call this place home, and not be scared to walk the streets by myself.

If you've gotten this far, you might be interested in the fact that I have a Picasa album to which I am attempting to add my photos as much as possible. Jon has been nice enough to set it up so that there is a link to the album at the bottom of this blog page. So far, I have been able to upload about 4 pictures in an hour of internet use. So don't get too excited. But it's a start!