Up in the morning
Up in the morning…out on the job…(I’d like to tell)…work like the devil for my pay…while that lucky old sun just rolls around Suriname all day. So…each morning I get up, put on my go to work uniform. Black bike paints, Blue and Orange bike shirt, (good Dutch colors), bike gloves and of course the mandatory bike helmet. I kinda look a little silly… everybody else is just riding along in regular street cloths and most embarrassing of all… is that little old Dutch ladies in skirts and blouses are passing me by …I’m kind of semi-paralyzed by the crazy drivers on the narrow two lane hole laden streets… they just cruse along with out a care in the world. That’s the thing about Suriname…they don’t have a care in the world and they don’t care about the world …theirs or yours...you can tell that by the amount of trash they throw out the bus windows. Well, anyway… I arrive at work in about a half hour and then there’s the start of the days routine. …turn on the lights…turn on the Air conditioner…Lock my door…take off my uniform (more then you want to know?)…turn on the computer and sign in…get dressed…check my e-mails…and now I’m ready to go.
So …what exactly do I do??? Well I think… like…how do you organize the ladies of Albenaston who make Cassava Crackers. And if you can get them organized and they make a bunch of this really tasty cracker… how do you get it packed in a jungle…wrap them in palm leaves??? I don’t think so. And, over in Powoka, how do you get the Pineapple/Watermelon growers to form a coop, when all they want to do is load the harvest into their cars, drive them into Paramaribo and sell them…cash on the barrel head…off the hoods and tops of their cars. Over in Nickeri they got a bunch of small rice growers who can’t compete with the large multi-international company, so their not sure how they’re going to feed their families…IICA and LVV (Dept of Agriculture0 is trying to figure out what alternative crops they should grow… So that’s what I do …I sit around thinking about what to do and how to do it. In the mean time… I’m learning how to grow pineapples…how to slash and burn the forest so you can grow watermelons and more pineapples. Yep, that’s the way they do things…slash and burn the rainforest… and if you listen carefully you’ll understand why… and if you want it to stop… send lots of money to buy the equipment that will make these farmers into ones that will till rather then burn.
The other day I visited one of the countries largest food processors…I don’t know if this visualization will work for you…but years ago I visited a canning plant in California and in the lobby there was a picture of the original processing plant that the family started back in the 1800’s. It was kinda neat; give you a real nostalgic feeling… well… I now know where all that equipment in the picture went…it’s right here in Suriname…it didn’t give me a very good feeling about the current food processing situation in this country.
I leaned about a couple of new products while in the interior…one called quaack.. It’s a couscous type product made out of cassava…wheat free…easy to prepare…taste great…I love it. The other is, what the natives say, is a great energy drink, made from a palm nut called potoceri. Some of my R@D friends at Clif may know it as “Acai”. To tell the truth you got to flavor it up.
The challenges and the opportunities here are terrific…. if I was only 40 years younger
That’s it for now…Me nango
Up in the morning…out on the job…(I’d like to tell)…work like the devil for my pay…while that lucky old sun just rolls around Suriname all day. So…each morning I get up, put on my go to work uniform. Black bike paints, Blue and Orange bike shirt, (good Dutch colors), bike gloves and of course the mandatory bike helmet. I kinda look a little silly… everybody else is just riding along in regular street cloths and most embarrassing of all… is that little old Dutch ladies in skirts and blouses are passing me by …I’m kind of semi-paralyzed by the crazy drivers on the narrow two lane hole laden streets… they just cruse along with out a care in the world. That’s the thing about Suriname…they don’t have a care in the world and they don’t care about the world …theirs or yours...you can tell that by the amount of trash they throw out the bus windows. Well, anyway… I arrive at work in about a half hour and then there’s the start of the days routine. …turn on the lights…turn on the Air conditioner…Lock my door…take off my uniform (more then you want to know?)…turn on the computer and sign in…get dressed…check my e-mails…and now I’m ready to go.
So …what exactly do I do??? Well I think… like…how do you organize the ladies of Albenaston who make Cassava Crackers. And if you can get them organized and they make a bunch of this really tasty cracker… how do you get it packed in a jungle…wrap them in palm leaves??? I don’t think so. And, over in Powoka, how do you get the Pineapple/Watermelon growers to form a coop, when all they want to do is load the harvest into their cars, drive them into Paramaribo and sell them…cash on the barrel head…off the hoods and tops of their cars. Over in Nickeri they got a bunch of small rice growers who can’t compete with the large multi-international company, so their not sure how they’re going to feed their families…IICA and LVV (Dept of Agriculture0 is trying to figure out what alternative crops they should grow… So that’s what I do …I sit around thinking about what to do and how to do it. In the mean time… I’m learning how to grow pineapples…how to slash and burn the forest so you can grow watermelons and more pineapples. Yep, that’s the way they do things…slash and burn the rainforest… and if you listen carefully you’ll understand why… and if you want it to stop… send lots of money to buy the equipment that will make these farmers into ones that will till rather then burn.
The other day I visited one of the countries largest food processors…I don’t know if this visualization will work for you…but years ago I visited a canning plant in California and in the lobby there was a picture of the original processing plant that the family started back in the 1800’s. It was kinda neat; give you a real nostalgic feeling… well… I now know where all that equipment in the picture went…it’s right here in Suriname…it didn’t give me a very good feeling about the current food processing situation in this country.
I leaned about a couple of new products while in the interior…one called quaack.. It’s a couscous type product made out of cassava…wheat free…easy to prepare…taste great…I love it. The other is, what the natives say, is a great energy drink, made from a palm nut called potoceri. Some of my R@D friends at Clif may know it as “Acai”. To tell the truth you got to flavor it up.
The challenges and the opportunities here are terrific…. if I was only 40 years younger
That’s it for now…Me nango
posted by Robert B. at 10:42 AM
2 comments
