I spent my first week in Suriname in the country's largest city, Paramaribo. It's a fascinating town but like most cities, also quite noisy and crowded. As the week went on, I became more anxious to escape to the vast wilderness of the interior.
Finally the day came to depart, and after weighing in with our luggage (can't be too heavy in a small plane, so no overpacking), we boarded the aircraft. After an hour or so, we touched down on the grass landing strip carved out of miles of unbroken rainforest.
Shortly after dropping the luggage in our cabin, my travel companions dug out their swimsuits and jumped in the river. I stood on the dock. Maybe it's growing up in the US, or maybe just Ohio, but I have never felt comfortable swimming in rivers or lakes. You can't see the bottom, there are fish swimming around your ankles, which you can't see either, and who knows if the water is even clean? We have been dumping nasty chemicals in our water (Hello Cuyahoga River!) for hundreds of years, so maybe I'm not wrong to be cautious.
Suriname is a different story. Their rivers are beautiful and incredibly clean. Indigenous villages are settled along rivers, and they rely on its water for everything. It is their main source of drinking water. They eat wild-caught fish for a large portion of their diet, use the river water for cooking, and bathe and do laundry there too.
According to a blog post by Rebecca Field of Conservation International on the larger Guiana Shield, “This region contains about 25% of the planet’s remaining intact forest and produces as much as 10–15% of the world’s fresh water.”
Unfortunately, small and large-scale gold mining operations have been moving further and further into the interior, threatening the health of the water and the people that rely on it. The biggest threat is Mercury, a byproduct of the gold mining process. Thankfully, there are people working hard to protect Suriname's fresh water, but they are sure to face challenges tackling such a large and complex issue.
Learn more at: http://blog.conservation.org/2013/09/protecting-surinames-wealth-of-water/#sthash.1XZvtBlf.dpuf
I grew to love swimming and bathing in the rivers. It took time to get over my fear, but I broke down the second day after a long boat ride spent baking in the sun, when nothing looked more inviting than that cool river. Careful to avoid the current, I dipped a toe, I looked into the shadows for eels, and then I stepped in. By our last day, I relished my twice daily swim. After a six hour hike, drenched in sweat, there was nothing better than diving into that clear water, goose bumps rising on my arms as I scattered the fish.
ellievsbear
gummygunk
prguitarman
tangentwithtanner
yousharknotpass