Hello everyone! I've come back to the city for Thanksgiving. Coincidentally, November 25th is Surinamese Independence day, so I'll be experiencing that one in the city too. The ambassador is hosting a thanksgiving party that we have been invited to as well. It will be a fun week.
Back at site, I have been having a good time. As it turns out, I am pretty good at speaking the language already. I found this out on my adventure with Baa Belly. Baa Belly is my neighbor. He is something like 90 years old and he takes care of me with bush medicine when I'm feeling sick. (Side note: The other day I had a pretty bad cold and Baa Belly came over with an orange and spent a long time explaining exactly how to squeeze the juice out of it and then how to strain the seeds out of the juice and then to put sugar into it and then how to drink it. All for a glass of orange juice. Some things are just universal I guess. When you're sick, you drink orange juice.) Anyways, Baa Belly has family in another village on the river, one where there is a Peace Corps Volunteer as well. He probably has family in almost every village because I am not kidding you when I say he must have like a hundred children by many different women.
So Baa Belly was going to travel to this village for a ceremony called Limba Uwii (Clean the Leaves). It's one of the many things that are done after someone dies. After much conversation, people convinced me that I should go too, since I had never seen one before. However, they made a big deal about me not leaving Baa Belly's side. And how when someone brings you to a place, he is responsible for you and you must not go off on your own. One guy came over to my house just to tell me that I shouldn't travel because you never know when a crazy guy will come and stab you. I just sort of ignored his advice... But all this hype about sticking with Baa Belly turned out to be completely false. As soon as we got out of the boat, I told Baa Belly that I had a Peace Corps friend in the village, and that was about the last time I saw Baa Belly. He went off and did his thing and I went off and did mine. After the second day, when we were supposed to go home together, Baa Belly went as far as to tell me to look for my own boat home because he was going to stay a few more days. I was very surprised. Why did everyone make such a big deal out of sticking together?? I may never know.
Before getting there, I had convinced two other PCV's to come to the ceremony with me, and two others were within walking distance of the village, so we all got together and it was a party. You can imagine the already tiny house filled with hammocks. A Limba Uwii ceremony starts early in the morning. Everyone in the village gets together and literally cleans the paths that lead to the river. They do yardwork. But it's cooler because you do it with machetes. When they collectively decide that they are done weeding, there is a communal river bath. A few things go on throughout the day after that. Someone has killed jungle meat and this is made into a soup that is distributed with cassava bread throughout the village in the evening. They also make a beverage out of boiled sugar cane. This will be consumed the next day. In the evening, there is music playing in the common area. As in, people are drumming and singing. Everyone is all dressed up and the young men are drinking beer at the Wankies. No one really dances except for the kids. Later they begin playing Saramaccan music through speakers and around 12 to 1 am, you see a few adults starting to dance. There will be electricity and music until the sun comes up around 6:30AM. Being one of the few females in Saramacca that drinks, (drinking is associated with promiscuity), I get a lot of free beer at events like this. I was quite drunk by the end of the night and stayed up till 3 am. The next morning, we got all dressed up again and around 9 AM, the real ceremony starts. They call it the Puu Ajoe. An Ajoe is something like a spirit that lingers around, and the ceremony is done to release the spirit so it can go away. There is a group of old men drumming and a group of women with their heads covered in a white koosu, dancing around a circle, or just dancing, and often just standing. All kinds of strange things happen to you when you sit among the crowd at this ceremony. The coolest thing was that they came around and tied a random koosu on everyone's head. Once you have your head tied, you are allowed to get up and dance if you want. You can also keep the koosu. They pass out all kinds of goodies. Various cakes, cassava bread with sugar on it, soda, beer and Palm Rum. You can drink the beverages, or get creatve with them. A lot of the rum gets poured into hands and then rubbed on heads or legs. People pour soda on heads, alcohol too. Some people spray the beverage of choice onto other people. At some point boys came around with what is called Peppe Wata (pepper water) and used leaves to flick it on people's heads. It doesn't burn unless it gets into your eye. One lady kept forcing people to take giant gulps of Palm. People get very drunk after enough time. Eventually, the young men appear, dressed in masks and covered from head to toe so you cannot recognize them. They mostly run around and scare the kids, but also dance with people and do inappropriate things on the dance floor. It's a crazy day. And good times are had by all.
Outside of the Limba Uwii, we had a good time in the village. It's really big so I felt like I could get lost at any time. We went to the museum, saw the biggest wankie on the river, hung out with the wood carver guys, and had an all around good time.
