Blog Posts

Travel to the villages of the remote rainforest interior of the country of Suriname is expensive and difficult, prohibitive even for most well-off residents of the nation’s capital city and certainly for young students.

In Suriname’s rainforest interior, ACT’s joint project with the University of Utrecht encompasses inventories of a wide variety of species, including mushrooms—or “koropi” as they are known in the local Tareno language.

It is 6 a.m. when the students wake up to the drip, drip, drip of water falling from nearby trees. It rained heavily throughout the night. The early morning rousing is now routine for these young people—collaborators in a“twinning” (partnership) project engaging ACT Suriname and the University of Utrecht.

Field work in Suriname comes at a hefty price—more than 60 percent of ACT-Suriname’s budget goes toward chartered flights to the country’s interior.

For this reason, our field staff make the most of their time during each community visit.

During the evenings at the Children’s Book Festival, many visitors came by the ACT booth to buy books and arts and crafts and to learn more about our programs. Among these visitors was a group from the Maria Boarding School—an institution that serves indigenous students who have recently arrived in the capital city from villages in South Suriname. These young people come to the capital to further their studies, because this opportunity does not exist in their villages.

Every year, ACT runs a booth in Suriname’s annual children’s book festival in the capital city of Paramaribo. During the festival, ACT representatives share more about our youth-oriented publications that emphasize natural conservation. These include the Junior Park Ranger series and “De Leerling van de Sjamaan” (The Shaman’s Apprentice).

March 27, 2015: By the final day of the Children’s Book Festival in Paramaribo, approximately 900 students had made virtual journeys to Suriname’s deep rainforest interior with ACT.

The Trio word “napopha,” meaning “thank you,” was frequently heard at the ACT booth, especially toward the traditional knowledge-keeper and healer Wuta from the indigenous village of Kwamalasamutu. ACT flew Wuta, an active participants in the Shamans and Apprentices Program, to Paramaribo to participate in the festival.

On February 11, 2015, the shaman Korotai Puumona escorted sixth-grade students from the public school in Kwamalasamutu into Suriname’s deep rainforest interior. During the walk, Korotai–an active participant in ACT’s “Shamans and Apprentices” program–introduced the students to a range of medicinal plants. They learned about their forests’ rich ethnobotanical wealth as Korotai pointed out species that are used to disinfect wounds, stem bleeding, treat snake and spider bites, and more.

On March 23, 2015, the Children’s Book Festival launched in Suriname’s capital city of Paramaribo. At 8:30 a.m., ACT’s Katia Delvoye received the first group of students for “A Journey to South Suriname”—an interactive experience in which students learn about the traditional knowledge of the indigenous and tribal communities of their nation’s rainforest interior.

Since the early 1990’s, ACT has worked with indigenous peoples to create ethnographic maps of their traditional lands. These maps not only catalog important locations for indigenous communities, but also serve in the ongoing dialogue over land rights for indigenous and Maroon peoples.