The residents of the interior are moving to the coast in large
numbers because the coast is MUCH wealthier than the interior villages. Note:
the city and the districts are the same as the coast. Resources and services in the villages are
limited by the high transportation costs.
Imagine transporting medicines, school supplies, teachers (many of the
teachers come from the capital) through the rainforest to small numbers of
people who much lower ability to pay for those goods than the wealthier rest of
the country.
The coast has electricity 24 hours a day, while many
interior villages have electricity 4 hours a day. Most places along the coast
have running water, but access to running water in the interior varies (residents
wash in the rivers). The coast has middle and high schools (students must go
the capital in order to attend country’s only university).The villages have
only elementary schools, so children go to the city without their parents to
continue their schooling. Kids from the interior live in internads, or group
houses, when they attend school in the city. I am unsure how much adult
supervision they receive, but sending twelve year olds away from their families
to live with other kids and cope with new cultures and new languages often has
disastrous results.
My friends had a fascinating conversation. (Peace Corps
volunteers are supposed to stay out of politics. Thus I am not mentioning my
opinion.) A Surinamese friend from the capital, who is black but not maroon,
told us that he thinks the government should pay everyone in the interior to
move to the city. “They want schools, 24/7 electricity and roads. Trying to
bring all that to the interior is expensive. Let them come to the city, where
all these things are already set up. Besides, letting people live in the
interior means polluting the Amazon rainforest. ”
Another friend, who is American, disagreed. “Those are their
ancestral lands. The land is deeply significant to them culturally. The
majority of the pollution is from firms extracting resources, not from people
just living there fishing. ” (Someone else pointed out later that maroons often
work for the extractive firms. I think it pays better than selling crops.)
“I would not kick them off. They would get voluntary incentives
to leave.”
“Yes,” replied another American friend of mine. “But, once
they come to the capital, how would they support themselves? In the interior,
they are subsistence farmers. They hunt and fish. How will they support
themselves without grounds on which to plant crops?”
“We’ll give them job training,” replied my Surinamese friend.
