By Anders Douglas-Svensson
Paramaribo is simply known as the capital of Suriname, the last country on earth to lose its colonial status. That is it. That is so inadequate when compared to everything the city has to offer. It is a small city, less than a million people, but it feels like a European city with its heavy dose of Dutch architecture. Paramaribo is vastly diverse and the multiculturalism is so utterly vivid. It is the kind of place where you can stand on one side of the street outside an old Dutch colonial building and smell rich Indian curry coming from across the street. Paramaribo is untapped when it comes to discovery. There are not a lot of cliché tourist hotspots; relatively few tourists visit the city at the northern edge of the South American rain forest. So, everything is rather new and inimitable.
Paramaribo is simply known as the capital of Suriname, the last country on earth to lose its colonial status. That is it. That is so inadequate when compared to everything the city has to offer. It is a small city, less than a million people, but it feels like a European city with its heavy dose of Dutch architecture. Paramaribo is vastly diverse and the multiculturalism is so utterly vivid. It is the kind of place where you can stand on one side of the street outside an old Dutch colonial building and smell rich Indian curry coming from across the street. Paramaribo is untapped when it comes to discovery. There are not a lot of cliché tourist hotspots; relatively few tourists visit the city at the northern edge of the South American rain forest. So, everything is rather new and inimitable.
Image by Antonio Mosquera
Paramaribo is adorably isolated and obsessively unique; bird singing contests and caged monkeys in markets are not for the faint of heart. It is ecstatically colourful; maroon, pink, green, even the white is brighter in Paramaribo. What is most amazing about Paramaribo is the interaction. In the marketplace people debate the morality of squishing a fly that wasn’t doing any harm. On the harbour you find fishermen and painters talking about their day. On Fridays you see Muslims leave the Mosque Keizerstraat as across the street Jews file into the Neveh Shalom Synagogue. Paramaribo is a magical orchestra full of life and vigour.
Sitting on the harbour watching the fishermen follow their routines religiously we could not help but reflect on everything we’ve seen on this journey. Sprawling metropolises, divided cities, and fishing ports; each with its own aura. But they all share something very powerful; three cities a world apart yet all are kindred expressions of people coming together. Essentially that is what a city is, people acknowledging that we’re better off living together than alone; but somewhere along the line we lost sight of that. We forgot the reason we came together; to build something special, something worthwhile. When we left on this trip, we said we would use the journey to wander. Well, I for one have never felt more at home, not in any particular city, but wherever ‘right here’ is.
Sitting on the harbour watching the fishermen follow their routines religiously we could not help but reflect on everything we’ve seen on this journey. Sprawling metropolises, divided cities, and fishing ports; each with its own aura. But they all share something very powerful; three cities a world apart yet all are kindred expressions of people coming together. Essentially that is what a city is, people acknowledging that we’re better off living together than alone; but somewhere along the line we lost sight of that. We forgot the reason we came together; to build something special, something worthwhile. When we left on this trip, we said we would use the journey to wander. Well, I for one have never felt more at home, not in any particular city, but wherever ‘right here’ is.
