Tembe, podosiri, wood in Paramaribo

Leo Sampai has a dream of bringing the Rainforest to the residents of Paramaribo - through the Maroon inspired wood furniture and juices available at his shop at SMS Pier.

I had the Açaí  ("podosiri" ) juice for the first time - apparently the palm fruit is very nutritious and Leo would like it to become popular in the city.

The shop is in SMS Pier, and Leo has designed and worked all the wooden furniture and the counters . At first you might think you can only look at them, but Leo says no .. sit on the chairs.

There are not many places in the Caribbean where the man blending the smoothies is the man who worked the furniture, and the man who has dreams that it would be possible to make money out of bringing the fruits of the rainforest to the city.

Bench at Tembe

Bad angle of a chair at Tembe

Bowl carved by Leo

The son of the President of Suriname plead guilty to charges of aiding Terrorism but Suriname is generally cleaner than Guyana, there is a general feeling that you can walk on the road ( a fisherman on the ferry back said he does not take off his gold chain or ring and walks all hours but as soon as he comes to Guyana his family tell him not to take them off) . All kinds of trade on the roadside , there was a man selling pickles - he comes out from 7pm to 10pm and had cucumber, apple, mango, gooseberry, plum and something else in Dutch I cannot remember. I thought of Leo who also believed in marketing things made in Suriname in different ways.

Pickles in the night.

Georgetown - and New Amsterdam and the Corentyne coast  -  have larger wooden buildings many of which are in beautiful states of decay and many which are being replaced by concrete.

Paramaribo though, the wooden buildings, though smaller,  have different shapes, styles, colours and there is something about the shutters. This particular building in the morning.. the shutters were all at different angles like if each had its own personality.

Shutters at all angles

Wood and prayer - Sint-Petrus-en-Pauluskathedraal

There are many wooden churches all over the countryside (the mandirs and mosques all seemed to be in concrete now).  The wood in the Sint- Petrus en - Pauluskathedraal ) seems unpainted and there is something about having this 'natural colour' on the roof, pillars and pews.
The palm trunks in the Palmentuin reminded me of the church pillars (or should it be the other way round?)

Palms

The old wooden buildings are also interesting. Unlike concrete buildings, the old wooden buildings beg questions of who lived here, what happened here, when was it built, where are the original builders. This particular building - there was something about the top floor windows and the way the lace curtains billowed out in the breeze with cloth and wood mingling to create a home.

Lace curtains .. thanks Kodzo Wilkinson