Why an extra blog?

Why an extra blog, especially one dedicated to Surinam? After all, I do have one already: the Ministry of Bla di Bla. To understand the present and look at the future, it is necessary to understand the beginning. And the beginning is called India. Hindustan. Bharat.

Part of my family history began some hundred years ago when a tiny Indian man of only 19 years old left his village Kamanpur in the south Indian state of Andra Pradesh. He was almost certainly recruited by the Dutch colonial government to work on one of the plantations in some far away country in South America.

Ramran Ali Mohamed Jousief boarded the SS Indus III in Calcutta on 27th October 1908, heading for a new future in a new country. On 5th December of that same year he set foot on Surinamese soil.

He started working on the plantation Meerzorg. Somehow Surinam did not work for him, even though he married and got one son. So, one morning on 5th March 1920 – he was in his early thirties by then - he called it quits and returned to the Motherland India, leaving behind his wife and child.

That’s where most of the information as found in the Historical Database Suriname, stops and where Ramran’s family left behind in Surinam, takes over. As said, Ramran had only one son: Rafiek Mohamedjoesoef, the very man who would later become my grandfather from my mum’s side of the family.

Last year I visited Surinam three times and on one occasion I went to my mum’s birthplace. First, we drove through Pad van Wanica. Then we took a left entering the Tout Lui Fautweg. After about 15 minutes or so, we hit a sandy road full of potholes. We had finally arrived at Bergers Hoop, an out of the way place that was once the heartland of many British Indian immigrants. That’s where mum was born, nearly seventy years ago.

I came back in August that very same year and eagerly began taking loads of pictures. Rest assured, most of them will be published on this blog. I kind of rediscovered the country, it is after all where both my parents were born, as well most of my relatives and a dear friend who means the world to me. In fact, she lives not too far from where my mum was born.

No 2009 was not the year in which I visited the land of the Holy Ram for the first time. For that, we need to go back a bit further in time, to the year 1971. I was only six years old then and luck would have it that this was the same year in which Roma Ramadhin was born. Who would have believed our paths would cross some 39 years later...

This blog will focus on various aspects of the country: politics, economics, religion and cultural, or at least, that is the aim.