Paul Schnabel on Suriname thirty years after independence.

Poet Hendrik Marsman caught the Dutch landscape in these famous lines: ‘Thinking of Holland, I see wide rivers meandering slowly through infinite low lands’. When I was in Suriname these lines went through my head not because I was pining for home but because they were so apt. The rivers of Suriname are wide, much wider than any Dutch river, bogged down with mud and, unboardered by dikes, a seamless fit with the infinite green low lands that surrounds them. Flat and wet, that was my first impression of Suriname and the incessant rain prompted more Marsman: ‘There the sun slowly perishes in the stranglehold of grey multi coloured mist’. The heat did not let up though and that made all the difference.
Dutch
Suriname is still Holland in the tropics, much more so than the Antilles, and after thirty years of independence it continues to point its antennae towards the Netherlands. The signs are in Dutch and the people speak Dutch. The teachers write the same sentences on the blackboard that I remember from my childhood, in the same impeccable handwriting. Zanderij airport is no more than a long strip in the forest (no one calls it jungle here) and only caters for one major international airport: Schiphol. 4 out of every 10 Surinamers live in the Netherlands and are Dutch nationals with a Dutch passport.
At the same time Suriname is as unlike the Netherlands as it is possible to be. Cars drive on the left, there is hardly any public transport, cyclists are almost non existent and pedestrians an endangered species. The old Paramaribo city centre with its beautiful wooden houses is falling down and nobody seems to care. Buildings are popping up left right and centre and are almost invariably ugly, ostentatious and cheap at the same time. They’re called ‘powder palaces’( ie built with the proceeds of the cocaine trade), made from marble and flanked by mountains of rubble, a rundown garage or a sad little fruit stall.
Casinos
Just like in the US, electricity cables are everywhere and when the rains come whole neighbourhoods are flooded. Paramaribo now boasts sixteen enormous and decidedly iffy looking casinos. There’s one being built right opposite the president’s office.
The Paramaribo building boom shows that the country is not doing too badly. Even declared opponents of president Desi Bouterse have to agree he is growing into his new role. Inflation is under control and he is doing something about illegal gold prospecting, not just for tax reasons but in order to protect the rainforest. The state run oil industry is doing well and more off shore oil finds are expected. Expensive new Japanese cars are parked outside hovels and inland almost every korjaal boat has been equipped with a strong Yamaha outboard motor. Paddling has gone of fashion and in the forest mobile phone masts intermingle with the trees.
Bureaucracy
The state authorities are Suriname’s main worry. The country has 50,000 civil servants, with a population of barely half a million people. Bureaucracy and the you-scratch-my-back-I’ll- scratch-yours mentality are rife, clientelism a way of life. As a Surinam colleague once told me: ‘A Hindustani minister will favour the Hindustani population, a Creole minister the Creole population and a Javanese minister the Javanese population. We are on a merry go-round and it’s getting us nowhere.’
And every time I think to myself, hopefully and resignedly at the same time, that it should be possible to rearrange things in order to achieve some sort of pleasant order in this small and by no means poor country.
Paul Schnabel is head of the government social policy unit SCP