Mi Cyaan Dead ⚰️ Annetta's Hof And The Colorful 11 ⚽ Paramaribo, Suriname
@Sreypov and I recently took a tour of Annetta's Hof, a large cemetery near our new rental room containing a memorial for the lives lost in Suriname's deadliest aviation disaster.
☀️ Mek A' Move ☁️
When you're a family of 4 living in a windowless rental room during an anti-social pandemic, sometimes you just have to go outside for no other reason than simply to stay sane and feel human again.
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The best nearby outdoor open space we have access to happens to be a cemetery, but there is some interesting history to be learned about this place. Before we got there we had to dodge some traffic and PPE propaganda, admire a neon colored near-dead moth that @Sreypov put in her purse for rehabilitation, and wonder where the high-as-a-kite Dutchman is who list his ganjabrella.
🚶♂️ Gwaan Dweet Suh 🚶♀️
Not exactly thrilled for the day's adventure, we entered the graveyard to see what photo opportunities there may be.
I do however, love taking photos of dilapidated and abandoned places where mother nature is trying to reclaim the land. Usually I prefer old forgotten local tourist attractions, but it's obvious from the exterior that this cemetery has a long story to tell.
⚽ De Colorful 11 Dem 🥅
The most prominent structure at this site is a large monument to the lives lost in 1989 from Suriname's worst aviation disaster. The Colorful 11, a Dutch exhibition football team featuring players of Surinamese descent, lost the majority of its players in crash.
176 of the 187 passengers aboard Suriname Airways Flight 764 perished in this crash, and the names of these passengers are featured on the plaques adorning the pillars. On top of the pillars rests sculptures clearly intended to represent half of a jet engine.
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Just behind the monument is a gravel star with a small dome in the middle, and the plaque there seems to indicate it was installed as a memorial one year after the crash.
The small plaque above reads -
"Like a doe that yearns for streams of water so my soul yearns for you oh god."
"Not what divides us but what binds us brothers and sisters."
This place has clearly seen better days, and seems to be all but abandoned during Suriname's economic downturn and COVID-19 related problems. It is quite clear from the surroundings though, that this cemetery has been in a state of disrepair for many years.
📸 A Lickle Tour 🚶♂️
With the high-noon sun beginning to bear down on us, we still needed to run a few errands and stop by Roopram Roti, so I took a quick tour of the surrounding area.
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All the graves were so tightly packed together with no walking path, I would've had to have stepped over graves to get to other parts of the cemetery, so I took what pictures I could without making a disturbance.
From Koreans to the Baha'i faith, Muslims, Hindus, Javanese and more are buried here, and it is quite a morbid example of the multicultural history of this country. Somehow, I still find beauty in these forgotten and neglected places, and a cemetery is perhaps the best reminder of how precious the gift of life is.
🌯 Mi Hungry 🚶♂️
Running too short on time to make lunch before a very hungry @KidSisters would have a meltdown spurred on by hunger, we got some rotis from Roopram to take home for a lazy lunch.
🙏 THANKS FOR READING 🙏
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A beautiful post.
I am sorry for the windowless rental room.
I enjoyed the pictures of the cemetery, there is something beautiful about it.
It's not ideal, but it reminds of how we are trapped in this country, trapped by our room, and trapped by our passports and inability to get visas, which could all be solved by money, because that is what runs the world. I have a USA passport, which can get me tourist visas easily, but that does me no good as a migrant/immigrant. We have a friend from Nepal who travels the world on his Nepalese passport, one of the weakest passports in the world, but because he has lots of money and a university education, he is always able to fit into a visa category and get a sponsor or self-sponsor.
Thanks for stopping and seeing the beauty of what many would normally miss. !ENGAGE 15
The intricacies of travel never seize to surprise me.
I live in the USA and am Native American, yet get treated like an immigrant in many parts of the nation simply because I come from a Spanish Speaking family.
How much money exactly would you need to fix this situation. Are you a simple bull run away from getting there?
Well, our story is a long and twisted one, but I spent 10 years in Cambodia, but I am originally from the USA. I went to Cambodia to escape poverty in the USA, and it worked, I became a professional teacher within a few months and was a middle class citizen within half a year.
Because it's illegal for us to marry in Cambodia, my visa extension and work permit were denied after 10 years of no problems, and there was no hope of any friends or family visiting, we decided to get married in the western hemisphere in one of the few countries which gives visas on arrival to Cambodians.
We ended up in Ecuador, but my family kept producing excuses for why they couldn't make it to Ecuador to meet us, then after 90 nearly 90 days there, we faced overstaying our visas and becoming illegal aliens, so we attempted immigration and our lawyer stole our money and we were intimidated by the expensive immigration bureaucracy there.
We escaped to Suriname a few days before overstaying, arriving on a new E-Visa system available to Cambodians. We overstayed and were granted asylum here at a special office, then the economy crashed, inflation went through the roof, corona came and destroyed everything even further, now borders are closed, and we are broke and stranded.
We are currently 1+ week from getting married here in Suriname and obtaining criminal background checks so that we can go immigrate to a new place, and and we've given up on American friends or family every getting to know my Cambodian daughters and wife, but we unfortunately can't return to Cambodia as borders are now closed.
So, that leaves us looking for a super poor and similar to Cambodia country where our Cambodian savings actually represents something of value. Here in Suriname we are humiliated and feel very uncomfortably poor, and there are extreme cultural differences. I think we are going to end up in Ethiopia, Nepal, or Mauritius.
If we can get to one of these countries, we could find a similar cost of living and way of life that we are used to, and I think we could thrive. If this is the case, we only need $300 a month to pay rent, buy groceries and cover transport costs for a family of 4.
The plane tickets are the killer though, because we can't transit certain countries, so we generally have to purchase one-way tickets, meaning that we have to exit the international zones to claim baggage each time, which Cambodians need a visa for, so we basically that means only I can carry luggage when travel, so we have reduce our family possessions to 2-3 suitcases every time we want to attempt a new life somewhere.
So far it looks like $4,000 to $6,000 will get us 4 tickets to somewhere that we can thrive and afford to live. Thanks for the positive vibes @metzli. I can only imagine how you feel in the USA. I've told my family someone will cuss us out at Wal-Mart if we speak Cambodian to each other while shopping, but she doesn't believe me. !ENGAGE 25
$300 dollars a month doesn't even buy groceries for my family of 5 (sometimes 6) here in California. I can see the appeal of living elsewhere.
I wrote this article:
https://leofinance.io/hive-167922/@spinvest-leo/let-us-play-how-much-does-it-cost
For through the Spinvest community. It is the first of a mini series so we can see via the leofinance community where our $$$$$ peers stand.
So far Nigeria has the smallest minimum wage which is $25 per hour.
ENGAGEtokens.ENGAGEtokens.Give thanks @thekittygirl and @innerblocks. !ENGAGE 10
ENGAGEtokens.I have driven past that graveyard, but never thought to stop and take in those stories. I know that visiting graveyards is a thing that could attract tourists, but in Suriname we haven't really explored those possibilities. But I really am interested in the stories of those people lying there
Well, that cemetery certainly wouldn't attract "standard tourists". I still don't have a sales pitch to lure someone away from the tropical Caribbean islands and come to Suriname instead, and Brazil along with western South America has a monopoly on Amazon tourism. I still think there might something in the catchphrase...
Americans like to "go mudding," so maybe someone in Suriname could start a business to let Americans drive monster trucks throught the world's choicest mud pits. At the end of the trip they could buy some gold nuggets to take home, and that's the best idea I've got....... !ENGAGE 30
There were some people talking about the "mud" tourism yeah or to accommodate mud baths...
Unfortunately it stayed at just an idea
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A real honor @pinmapple, thank you so much. !ENGAGE 10
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Lol, I would never think of taking a casual stroll through a cemetery.
But it seems it's a good source of stories and photo opportunities. Although, some older "aunties" here would scold me for taking pictures and potentially capturing souls in them. 😅
The government doesn't pay any attention to graveyards. And usually the graveyard management depends on the monthly or yearly fees that relatives pay to keep the place clean. As you can guess, not all relatives pay these fees or even bother to clean their piece themselves, which some people do. So that makes it even more complicated.
Yeah, it wasn't the most thrilling of adventures, but sometimes we just gotta get out of room and breathe. I hope I didn't capture any souls, it's not even a DSLR. The place was run down, sad to see, but still an interesting insight into modern Suriname history. !ENGAGE 55
ENGAGEtokens.I actually enjoy wandering around old cemeteries to get some history of the place.
They have a different style of grave markers that what we have here in Canada.
Glad you and your family got out for a walk about!
Yeah, a lot of history in that place, and so many different religions and nationalities, and different styles of graves. Sometimes we just gotta get out and move. !ENGAGE 20
ENGAGEtokens.