The last seven weeks we spent in the middle of the jungle of Suriname on a river called the Tapanahony. In a little village we lived together with the inhabitants of the region: the Okanisi people. The Okanisi experience regular flooding, a lack of clean drinking water, droughts and a number of other problems. We have been asked by the head of the region called the Gaanman to help start a project to solve these problems and develop the region in a sustainable way.
The first step of this project was determining exactly what the problems are. To do this we visited all 28 villages of the Okanisi along the river by boat. At each village we conducted interviews, took samples of the water, measured the depth of the river and the speed at which it flows and also used a drone to construct an elevation map of each village.
We found out that each village has its own issues, but also its own way to solve them. Some villages are flooded each year, so people started building on poles. Other villages do not have any clean water during the dry period, and try to gather as much rainwater as possible beforehand. There is not a lot of work in the region, most people have their own little farmland in the forest and plant Cassava. A plant which produces a kind of sweet potato, but needs a process before it can be eaten (picture on the right). The only work that brings a certain amount of wealth to some people in the region is goldmining. During the mining of gold they use either mercury or cyanide in the process however. The result is a heavily polluted river, which people still drink from, simply because there is no other option.
Together with the people in our village we held a workshop to combine our knowledge to see if we can find a solution to these problems. It seems there are a lot of possibilities for solving the problems, however much work still needs to be done before the Okanisi people can live in a safe and healthy environment.
Currently we are preparing to hold a conference for stakeholders in Paramaribo. Next week we will return to the Netherlands. We are already missing our daily barefoot football sessions with the children in the village and our Okanisi language lessons from our kind neighbour.
