Suriname – The Journey Home

The adventure to Suriname, seemed at moments an amazing jungle dream. In other moments, it seemed like a nightmare that I could not wake up from.
Certain events show us the raw and real truths of life, the light and the dark. Even in that same moment in time. And it can show how they coexist in this reality. Some places show us where we are tremendously immature and still need to grow up.
Suriname showed me all of those.
On every level I was spinning. But when I got down to being really honest with myself, I was actually unspinning a web of illusion that I believed was the true reality … but wasn’t.
What makes the darkness inside have more light … is people.
The beautiful, friendly, loving, people of Suriname were the energy that pushed my old illusions away.
The people of Suriname understood the reality in which they lived, and they knew how to navigate it … with the ease and grace that such a place demanded from all those that lived there.
I realized how protected, I had been in my life, even though I tried often to lean into new things.
Suriname was a place where “real” life could not be a fairytale (as in the ballet world). Real life was extremely dangerous, precarious, and not automatically given.
Even now, when I look at the pictures of those moments, I can see in my face and body language how challenged I felt to fit in and how hard I was trying to … just be okay.
Every moment had some unexpected challenge, and I could feel how different I was. I could feel how my life had not pushed me up against the level of daily life challenges that these people had been forced to cope with.
It was not that my life was without challenges but mine were from a chronically depressed and fear-filled mother that lived on the edges of reality. Mine were about finding confidence in being the tallest ballerina in the room. Mine were about testing my personal limits and discovering artistic and creative edges through my art.
Suriname was a country torn up by those in power trying to take from the wonderful people of this country because they did not see the land or the people, they only saw in this place their personal game of Monopoly.
And these people had to constantly deal with this constant uncertainty. It was about learning how to navigate the game of “who has the power now”.
Without Herman’s sister playing the fainting game, I would have never gotten all the paperwork done to just get out. I would have never known how to get through the airport’s military rules and regulations. Even without all the paperwork, things were very tense and touch and go in moments. There were many moments, I had to suppress the fear that threatened to take over my psyche.
My mind struggled to know how to live and be in a country on the edge of constant conflict.
This trip was forcing me to look at how shielded I had been growing up in America being a white, light-haired, blue-eyed, American female.
In my home, the one thing my mother could not tolerate was bias and prejudice. She had walked in the Martin Luther King protests and had rotten tomatoes thrown at her and her friend as they went down the streets with the other protesters. An amazing feat for a woman who had constant fear most of the time.
I must hand it to my mother that when she believed in something … she was a force to be reckoned with. One imperative from my mother was that one should never look down on others. That everyone should have an equal opportunity to have a healthy and successful life. And that skin color, nationality, or religion should never matter. She taught me that we were all one and that we should treat each other with respect. To her, that is what it meant to be an American.
And in my very narrow reality, I thought I understood that and walked the walk.
Suriname taught me that there are scary places where I am not the majority. I have no power. And I am the outsider. That can be a shock to feel such a thing for weeks and I marveled at those in our country who had felt that for not just weeks, months or years, but … generations.
I learned that I too could be in danger from those judging me in reverse. That was not such a good feeling. This turn and twist in reality was something I had not anticipated, and it was quite a rude awakening.
From these beautiful people in Suriname, I learned that I did not really know my own country. I learned from them, the terrible things that our own government had done in the distant and recent past in this country and in many countries in South America.
I got an education in my own history. The history that no one was talking about then, and one that is still difficult to have … even now.
I learned that what I thought were the truths of our country were a glossed over, sugar-coated version of a very different reality. I was finally looking at it from the other side and it was not so pretty. I learned that the news we got in American was not “THE NEWS”.
My eyes had been opened by these amazing people that were so much stronger inside than I. They were much more honest than me about how life really was.
And I realized how much I still had to learn.
Suriname taught me to pay attention to how other countries viewed us, how people in other countries perceived Americans. And what they saw through their eyes.
I realized how arrogant most Americans were and how very uneducated we were to the problems in other countries and how those in power often made things worse because of the greed and corruption within our own systems and the terrible racial inequality that we continued to perpetuate even today.
Suriname unraveled me in a way that I did not expect. And I am very grateful for that experience.
I was shocked at my own naiveté.
It became clear that, I did not speak the language of this country and going through the check points at the airport, became the classic game of someone in uniform yelling more loudly at me because I was not responding properly because of the language barrier.
Life is a process to discover and retrieve our light in the density of the conflicts that we encounter in this existence. But life is also the place where we must look our own darkness in the face and decide whether it is something to fight (which is never the best option) or if it is something that is asking to be loved, and integrated.
At the airport, I manage (just barely), to get through all the necessary steps for the military government and get on the first of many planes.
I am in a small prop plane and there are probably only 30 people on the flight. The only direction we could go … was to the airport in Port of Spain, Trinidad.
There I would have to get the other tickets to get the rest of the way home.
Trinidad is an island that is its own country, off the coast of Venezuela. Beautiful place but I never left the airport.
Yet, from the air … it was lovely.
Then I was off to Curacao, Aruba, the Bahamas, and finally customs in Miami.
The itching on my back had stopped and for that I was grateful. But I did not want to have someone look under my clothes to see the plastic still covering my back.
As I go through customs, I was questioned and required to explain why I was in Suriname during a military takeover. And I explained it to the best of my ability … short and sweet.
I was allowed through, and it was a great feeling to be on American soil, officially.
From Miami I had a four hour wait to catch my flight to Atlanta. And from there I had a 3 hour wait to catch the flight to Dallas.
In Miami, I got on the phone to let my parents know that I was in Miami, and my dad had already been told by the State Department that I was on my way and what my itinerary was.
There are times that it was beneficial that my dad had “connections” in the government.
I remember, feeling as if I could finally relax on the plane from Miami to Atlanta. And I slept deeply and soundly from Atlanta to Dallas.
There were no mosquitos trying to eat me. There were no rats trying to get into the chicken coup. There were no Winti Rituals happening on the stage. There were no ghosts dancing with me in the theater.
And yet, somehow life felt smaller even though it was safer.
Some growing light had dimmed.
But inside something had expanded. And that place would continue to grow.
The Amazonian jungle had awakened something inside me. She had shown me a new way to not use ballet as a way to escape the world … but to instead show others how much more of this world could and should be experienced. She showed me my own shallowness. By awakening a new and somewhat scary depth that I had never yet touched.
The wildness, smells, sounds, and tastes of the jungle had reminded me of something.
Something that I had forgotten.
Even in that moment I could not quite remember what it was. It was like a feeling that was just beyond my grasp. But that feeling was now scratching to be heard. She was beginning to make her way out of the depths of my subconscious. She was seeking to find the pathways to come back to me. The jungle had awakened her. I was not sure what might unfold next.
She would become a powerful force and ally in the future. But for now, it was enough that I could sense her even if I did not know or understand her … yet.
She would call me home to South America at another time. And then I would be ready for the next leap in my awareness.
But for now, it was enough that the unraveling had begun.
The path ahead could be seen.
What I did not know that this wildness would lead me back to the jungles of the Amazon … so that I could dance with the mermaids once again.
~Suzanne Wagner~