I wanted to write about a book written by a fellow statesman, that I had read in highschool, but I forgot the title and the little report that I had written about it then, also seems lost. I then read some news articles and that's when it hit me. It seems that a documentary was made about the 45 years of independence of Suriname.
While I applaud the making of a documentary and taking charge of one's own history, I am aware that a lot of history in Suriname is still lost. A lot of stories aren't written down and that there were people who wanted to erase our own narratives. In Suriname's history there were plenty of battles, revolts and we also had some wars. The painful realization that I had, was that some of those stories only became mysteries.
Inside the Marienburg factory.
There's the story of the revolt at the Marienburg factory in 1902, where immigrant contractors were burned or killed or both. The revolt was because they were being exploited, wives were being raped and so on. The tragedy is that the family members weren't allowed to have closure, because the bodies were disposed in a unmarked mass grave. Until this day nobody knows where the grave is.
And then you have the story of the Tucajana Amazones, a guerilla group in the late 1980's. Some men of the guerillas distanced themselves, because they suspected being exploited by the army, who used to have control in Suriname by coup d'état. At the time there was civil unrest and a civil war in Suriname. The men who distanced themselves needed to flee, but were captured and from accounts of eye witnesses were brutally murdered, their bodies cut into pieces and thrown into the river. Their families also couldn't have closure or have a proper burial.
In honor of those lost lives and the families, who are still in the dark about what had happened to their loved ones, I wrote a poem. I tried to tell their story and what they must be going through.
How does one just go about?
Go about their day, without knowing,
without proof of life or death?
Not even a proper burial?
How does one just go about?
Move on without the truth,
with an aching, a longing,
and not even a goodbye?
How does one live with oneself?
Going on living knowing the facts,
while blatantly distorting history
and clearing ones hands from bloodshed?
How does one live with oneself,
seeing the cries and pain
of mothers searching for answers,
the wives and sisters seeking justice?
How does one nation move forward,
knowing that information has been erased?
How does one nation prosper,
when it doesn't research the occurrences?
Now on the last day of 2020 I was thinking about these lost stories, of which the truth yet has to be determined. I hope that my fellow Surinamers may find the closure and that we as a nation do everything in our power to prevent such travesties in the future.
