My neighbor, the dictator: surprises just over the back fence.
In a weathered leather album tucked away in my parents’ house, there lies a snapshot that always catches my eye. It’s of my mother, standing somewhat apprehensively in downtown Paramaribo, a candid moment captured by Dad. He had to be discreet, snapping the photo from his hip to avoid arrest by the MPs’ for photographing military points of interest. To his day I can’t understand why he took the risk.
Behind her stands a mural, a burst of vibrant tropical colors that always seemed to contrast with her nervous expression. It’s Ray Daal’s work, from the renowned Waka Tjopu collective, titled “10 Years’ Independence,” depicting Surinamese workers with pitchforks, sledgehammers, and shovels, under the bold proclamation “Voor Dit Land Heb Ik Gekozen” (For This Country I Have Chosen).
This snapshot embodies a paradox for me. Suriname was like a Land of Oz for a 4th grader, an exotic tapestry of cultures and colors, but it wasn’t the country I had chosen. In contrast, my family, much like Suriname, paid homage to democratic ideals in theory more than in practice. We lived under what I’d call a ‘cosmic theocracy’ — God was at the helm, with all the dads of the world as His earthly deputies. In our household, decisions were not up for a vote, especially when Dad, much like the Blues Brothers, believed he was on a mission from God.
Our home in Suriname, a white stucco structure, nestled on a palm-lined dirt road named after Dutch engineer Willem Johan van Blommestein. It was a street where wild dogs roamed free, stirring up nervous squawks from the local scarlet macaw as they strutted by.
The rainy season transformed our street into a temporary aquatic wonderland. Drainage ditches would overflow, and I delighted in watching tiny fish leap to freedom in the newly formed streams on our way to school. I’d swim headlong down these flooded streets, blissfully ignorant of the fact that I was splashing in a mix of rainwater and raw sewage — an oversight I later attributed to my seemingly invincible immune system. Maybe that’s just Grandma’s homeopathy talking, although, now that I think of it, it may also explain how I contracted dengue fever.
But our tropical adventure wasn’t without its ailments. “Unidentified funguses,” as Cousin Eddie jokingly referred to them in “Christmas Vacation,” were a common occurrence. The local cure? A visit to the leprosarium. Its forked driveway had a rather stark entrance sign: “LEPERS < | > NON-LEPERS.” The fear of leprosy was a phobia my father had harbored since childhood, thanks to missionaries’ gruesome slideshows. After that, he wouldn’t even touch the “L” section of the dictionary or the book of Leviticus. Yet, when it came to his children’s health, he was willing to face even his deepest fears.
Our new neighbors were the Minister of Finance to the west and the country’s dictator, Dési Bouterse, himself to the north. It wasn’t his only home; he had another in Belem, Brazil, where he kept another mistress. Pretty sure our mission board (Wycliffe Bible Translators) left that off the brochure.
Dési was a huge sports fan. Before he took over the country, he was a P.E. teacher in the military. In 1974, while working for NATO service in Seedorf, Germany, he became a star shooting guard for the basketball club ARTA (Always Ready to Attack) and led their team to a championship.1 Dad once played a pickup game with him and his other NCOs — unaware he guarding the dictator until someone told him he was doing a good job bodying up Bouterse at halftime.
Our backyard was a tropical haven, hosting star fruit trees with their rubbery skin and kiwi-like flavor, and a meandering red-footed tortoise who nibbled on fallen banana leaves. It was the punk rock iguanas, though, with their spiky mohawks and matching soul patches, that stole the show, skittering by with their feet never touching the ground for too long (hot, hot, hot!).
Bouterse’s high brick wall, topped with a menacing array of broken glass bottles, was a clear boundary — a mix of local Fernandes sodas, including the unnaturally yellow Super Pineapple and (my favorite) Cherry Bouquet, alongside imported Coke and 7 UP bottles, forming a colorful but dangerous crown.
One afternoon, Mom ran outside, wild-eyed with fear, and began whisper-shouting at me and my sister. We were perched atop our A-framed playhouse, trying to catch a glimpse over Bouterse’s wall. I had extended my pocket telescope, hoping for a peek at the rumored black panther in a cage. Instead, the real show started when I panned to the right. There, two teenagers paced back and forth, cradling black Uzis, just like on ‘Miami Vice.’ How cool was that!
Across the street lived a missionary pilot named Mr. Rogers. My sister enjoyed playing with his daughter. It was a regular day when suddenly, the calm shattered — armed teenagers surrounded Mr. Rogers just as he was taking photos outside his house. Their words, sharp and rapid in Sranan Tongo, sliced through the air. Even a child, not fluent in this pidgin language, could sense the gravity in their tones. Sranan Tongo, with its undertones of English, Dutch, and African dialects, was like an angry jazz riff, a vocal embodiment of Suriname’s tangled history.
Their accusations against Mr. Rogers, something about unlawful pictures of Bouterse’s house, were clear in their hostility. In moments, the scene escalated. Army green Mercedes swarmed in and — poof — Mr. Rogers vanished into them. They hauled him off to the bowels of Zeelandia — a moated pentagon-shaped fortress constructed of red brick standing sentry at a bend of the muddy Suriname River.
In 1986, a Civil War erupted in Suriname, led by an enigmatic rapper, soccer player, and former Bouterse bodyguard known locally as “the Black Robin Hood.” It was amidst this chaos that we left — though ‘fled’ might be a more apt description. We exchanged the enchanting yet bewildering tropics of Suriname for the safety of a different realm — an American “Land of Ahs,” where the prairies of Kansas stretched endlessly. My father had secured a position at a small Christian school in the suburbs of Kansas City, presenting a stark contrast to the vibrant chaos we had known. Initially, it seemed we had escaped unscathed, but slowly, the facade began to crumble.
The unraveling started with my mother’s bouts of uncontrollable crying, a stark revelation of her inner turmoil. Solitary drives home after dropping us off at school became her refuge, where she’d break down singing hymns like, “Draw me closer to thee, oh Lord, draw me closer.” Next, her sobbing soon infiltrated our Sunday services in the non-denominational bible church, her tears silently screaming her pain.
One crisp fall afternoon, as I crossed the threshold of our home, still sweaty from soccer practice and wearing my favorite “God’s Gym” shirt, the front door shut with an ominous thud behind me. Certain sounds require no explanation. They strike a primal chord, like the howl of a mother wolf across a clear sky after losing a cub. The sobs escaping from the study were just such a sound. Time slowed to a halt while I waited to learn who had died.
My duffel bag fell to the mudroom floor as my right hand grabbed the door casing. Peering around the corner, I caught the shape of my mother slumped in a heap in front of the desk. Her face lay buried amidst folded arms, so only her dark chocolate hair was visible. A stripe of gray drove along her roots like a snow-covered highway at midnight. She had been fighting it back with dye since Suriname.
“It’s so big; it’s so big, just so big,” she murmured between sobs.
Her body heaved and then fell. Wave after wave of tears came rolling out, emerging from a lifetime of untold pain. As I held her in my arms, our roles reversed like shifting magnetic poles. Mom needed someone to care for her.
In that embrace, a realization dawned on me: her journey to draw closer to God was also a path leading to hidden truths. It was about slowly unraveling forty years of meticulously guarded pain… and secrets. Secrets that, like shadows, had been silently shaping our lives. What untold stories had she buried in these years of silence?”
If you’d like to read the rest of this story (think ‘Tiger King’ meets ‘Wild, Wild Country’, but with even more missionaries, mercenaries, and drug dealers), subscribe to my Substack here!
