Monthly Archives: September 2014

Yesterday I went fishing with the children of Pokigron, a maroon village at the upper Surinameriver in the district of Sipaliwini , one of the ten districts in Suriname, a South-American country at the Atlantic Ocean in the north of Brazil. Ninety percent of the country consist of undisturbed Amazon tropical rain forest. The forest is home to forest people (indigenous peoples and maroons) who are ten per cent of the total population. They are living in a traditional way in the forest. Without the forest they cannot exist. The forest is their sleeping place, pharmacy, supermarket, food store, roofing, hunting area, swimming ground, playing ground and fishing ground. Together with uncle Hugo Huur and my friend Sonja Carilho I accompanied the children of the village to a creek for fishing with neku. After a walk of half an hour and the crossing of three creeks, we came at a creek deep enough to fish. Now it is The Great Dry Time, so the creeks are drying up. By letting mashed leaves or beaten flat thick stems into the water the fish float to the top half dead in the water. Neku is a vine containing rotenone. Rotenone extracts oxygen from the water, making the fish become intoxicated and are easy to catch. The fish can be eaten simply because there is no residue incorporates. The video is showing the fishing trip.