PARAMARIBO– A unique museum where the history of a unique people will be preserved opened at Pikin Slee over the weekend. “The wealth of the Sa’maka should not be lost. We don’t to preserve the habits of our forefathers and teach them to our younger ones,” Paitoya Saaki, chairman of the Foundation Totomboti said at the opening ceremony Saturday of the Maroon Museum at Pikin Slee.

Pikin Slee lies at a three-hour boatride, up the upper Suriname River from Atjoni; Atjoni itself is a vibrant village at a three-to-four hour drive southbound from Paramaribo. Pikin Slee was chosen as location for the museum, because –with close to 3,000 residents- it is one of the largest Sa’maka villages alongside the River. The Sa’maka people are Maroons, tribes of descendants of Africans who during colonial times chose freedom in Suriname’s thick forest above slavery on Dutch plantations. For centuries these people retained their distinctive identities based on their West African origins and desire for isolation.

The initiators say they started the museum, because they were noticing that their unique culture is disappearing, slowly. “You can notice a lot of changes in the way our people live these days, the way they dress, eat, sing and even build their houses. A lot is different from the traditions of our bigi sma, our old people. We felt we had to do something before our culture is totally lost,” said Mando Doekoe, an artist who hails from the village. “We have to preserve their things, before they’re lost to us all. There are important things that they have left behind for us to know.”

He started foundation Totomboti (Sa’maka for the woodpecker bird), which received donations from international NGO’s Holland and sponsorships from local businesses.  The opening ceremony last Saturday was attended by more than 1,500 people; Vice President Robert Ameerali and Tourism Minister Falisie Pinas were the guests of honor.

“This is a testimony of what can be achieved by working together; we can do big things. Even set up a museum way up in the hinterland,” Ameerali remarked. Minister Pinas said the museum should turn into a good source of tourism income for the village and promised on behalf of Government to support the initiative of bringing knowledge of Maroon history to Pikin Slee.

click below for photos by Justine Eduards