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Boxel, district Wanica —

Phase 1 · Boxel, district Wanica

The water came back

Captain Ifna Gavuna Vrede keeps the Baling Soela Meisjes Internaat open for girls from the interior, so that they can attend school in the city. In heavy rain, the grounds flood first, and then the house.

What is needed How it came to this

Phase 2 · Upper Suriname river

Documenting the river

What you do not record disappears with the people who carry it. We travel up the river and document the villages, in images and in their own words.

How Riverview works What we document

Phase 3 · Suriname, Ghana, Benin

The bridge back

In the Surinamese interior, what has disappeared elsewhere still stands. We are working towards recognition of that, together with partners in West Africa.

Current status Tangible and intangible
Saamaka Upper Suriname river

Upper Suriname river

Upstream

Where the villages lie

The Saamaka settled in the interior after breaking free from colonial rule. Following the peace treaty of 1762, the Evangelical Brotherhood came here: they built outposts, schools, and later clinics, thus opening up access to the interior.

But they did not take away what they found. The language remained, the songs remained, the relationship with the ancestors remained. What disappeared elsewhere under missionary pressure still stands here — not because no one came, but because the people themselves continued to decide what they accepted.

What disappeared

The water came

Owru Ganzee was the largest village on the upper Suriname river. Since 1850 it had the first school in the interior, and since 1931 a clinic — both built by the Brotherhood. Anyone in the interior who wanted to learn to read went there.

When the Afobaka dam was completed in 1964, an area of more than sixteen hundred square kilometres flooded. Forty-three villages disappeared; approximately six thousand people were displaced. Owru Ganzee went under in 1965, school and all. It now lies at fifty metres' depth.

Ifna Gavuna Vrede was born there. She was two years old when the village disappeared under water.

Where people ended up

The transmigration village

Brownsweg was built for the people from the drowned area. Nine villages together, including Nieuw Ganzee. That is where Ifna grew up, before she became captain (a traditional Maroon office) — a traditional authority, and one of the few women to have been sworn in as such.

Compensation had been promised. Connection to the electricity grid had been promised. Successive governments delivered on neither. The reservoir dam supplies power; the villages of the people who paid for it did not receive it.

That is why everything that comes from the city is received here with a healthy dose of scepticism. That is not distrust. That is experience.

The distance

Too far to travel every day

In the interior there are ninety-six schools for GLO and twenty-six for VOJ. For VOS there are five. Higher education is absent: the IMEAO, the NATIN, the IOL, the PTC, and the Anton de Kom University are all in Paramaribo.

Anyone who wishes to continue after the MULO must therefore move. With family, or nowhere. From a village on the upper Suriname river that journey cannot be made daily, and for most people that is where it ends.

Where it ends

A house close enough

On the Gerardstraat in Boxel, sixteen kilometres from Paramaribo, stands the Baling Soela Meisjes Internaat — named after one of the oldest villages of Brokopondo, the same district whose water in 1965 swallowed forty-three villages. A place to live, close enough to the city to attend school every day: the IMEAO, the NATIN, the Anton de Kom University.

The school of her birth village has been under water since 1965. Sixty years later she keeps a house open so that girls from the interior can go to school after all. This time they go of their own free will, and they come back. --- ## SECTION 2 of 4 — 42 blocks

And now the water comes again. Not as a reservoir, but from below: first the grounds, then the house. The drainage of the neighbourhood has never been put in order — this is stated in a tender issued by the Surinamese government itself, concerning the clearing of the sewerage in the PWB project at Domburg.

The water that drove their grandmothers from their village now stands in their granddaughters' dormitory.

Why it is urgent

A boundary that disappears

There are caimans in the ditch along the grounds and in the water beyond. As long as it is dry, that is the ordinary condition of Suriname and no one loses sleep over it. But when the water rises, the distinction between the ditch and the grounds disappears. What was a boundary becomes one continuous expanse of water — and on one side of it, children are sleeping.

During the flooding, the guard dog disappeared and did not return. What happened to him, we do not know and we do not claim to know.

This is therefore not a matter of deferred maintenance. It is a question of safety, and that admits of no waiting list.

How we do this

Three phases, one river

They belong together and they move at different speeds. The water is a matter of weeks, the archive of months, the recognition of years. We do them in that order, and we say where we stand.

The house

Where we stand now Completed or in progress

Keeping the Baling Soela Meisjes Internaat running and keeping the water out. In addition, putting the management on a proper legal footing: there is as yet no Surinamese legal entity, and without one there is no bank account and no application can be submitted.

0%of children in the rural interior complete senior secondary education

54%are not in school at all at that age

5VOS schools in the entire interior

4girls' boarding houses in Paramaribo — this is one of them

Sources: MICS 2018 (UNICEF and the General Bureau of Statistics); National Education Policy Plan Suriname 2024–2031; Parbode, boarding house count 2016. In Sipaliwini, between 2019 and 2021 an average of ninety per cent of twelve- to fifteen-year-olds were not enrolled at any school.

Current status updated 8 August 2026

  1. Damage documentedPhotographs taken in 2019; footage of the flooding at the next heavy rainfall, with date and scale marker
  2. Notary approached for the Surinamese foundationWithout a legal entity, no bank account and no application
  3. Assessment of the water damage, and thereafter of the roofFirst establish where the water is coming from; replacing a roof on a building that is flooding from below solves nothing
  4. Submit application to RVOWindow open from 1 October 2026 to 11 January 2027

1 of 4 steps takenPhase 1

Support the house

The river

Where we stand now Next phase

The river is the lifeline, and at the same time an authentic, living archive: together with the people who live along it, it holds a history that has to be kept as heritage. Riverview records it — the river and the villages in 360 degrees, with one conversation per village in a fixed format. Consent from the traditional authorities first, cameras after.

Why this cannot wait. What has to be recorded here does not lie in a building or in a filing cabinet — photographs someone else can take as well, and better. The archive is the river itself and the people who live along it, and its oldest pages are the generation that still knows the drowned villages from its own experience. The reservoir filled between 1964 and 1971; anyone who watched the water come is now well past sixty and usually older, and there are fewer of them every year. A first recording is not a rehearsal for a better one later.

This phase is therefore also the introduction to the next one. What is recorded here is exactly what is asked for there: an inventory, and demonstrable consent from the traditional authorities. Without phase 2, phase 3 is an intention; with phase 2, it is a dossier.

5villages in the pilot

3languages per recording — Saamakan, Dutch, English

360°recorded from the water

Per village: a two-to-four-minute introduction from the boat, a five-to- ten-minute conversation with a representative about history, community, and current concerns, plus photographs and sound. Everything subtitled, everything with consent, everything provided with labels that the community itself draws up.

Those who wonder what the continent looked like through the eyes of the first people who arrived there will find here the closest answer that exists. The Maroons never lived in slavery; they broke free from it.

Recording asks for no fund and no foundation. It asks for consent, for someone able to hold a conversation, and for the name, the place and the date to be written down at the moment itself — because that is the one thing that cannot be repaired afterwards. That is why consent stands at the top of the list below and not at the bottom. Waiting until there is money reverses the order: by the time the money is there, some of those who could have told us are no longer alive.

Current status updated 8 August 2026

  1. Consent protocol with granman (paramount chief) and captainsThis comes before the cameras, not after
  2. Recording equipment and transport on the river
  3. Record five villages0 of 5
  4. Subtitles in Saamakan, Dutch, and English

0 of 5 villages recordedPhase 2

Take part in Riverview

The bridge

Where we stand now After that

Recognition of this heritage, together with partners in West Africa and with the African-American diaspora. This is the link that puts the Maroon community on the map beyond its own river as well. It is a long road, and its first step is the inventory that phase 2 produces.

Why this matters. For as long as this heritage is recorded nowhere, every generation has to explain again that it exists. Recognition turns a story into a given, and a community into a party that others have to reckon with. What recognition does not do is set out below.

Honest about the route. A nomination for the world heritage list can only be made by a state, and only if the subject is already on the national tentative list. Suriname currently has nothing on that list. That road is therefore not for today.

What is possible is the list for intangible heritage, to which Suriname has been a party since 2017 and where joint dossiers from several countries are explicitly encouraged. There too, the state submits. But what the community itself must supply — an inventory and demonstrable consent from the carriers — is exactly what Riverview delivers.

The precedent is Moore Town in Jamaica, where Maroon heritage was recognised in 2003. Be honest about what that delivered: status and one documentation project. No structural funding and no protection of land. Recognition is a lever, not a shield. In the Netherlands, three Maroon elements are now on the Inventory of Intangible Heritage: Maroon culture since 2015, Songe, Awasa and Mato since 2023, and the Afáka script since 2024. That route is therefore alive.

Current status updated 8 August 2026

  1. Inventory of the heritageFollows from phase 2
  2. Contact with the Knowledge Centre for Intangible Heritage
  3. Approach partners in Ghana and Benin
  4. Nomination via the Surinamese stateOnly a state can submit

Become a partner

What it is about

What you can touch, and what you must hear

Heritage falls into two kinds, and Maroon culture is rare because both are still present. One without the other is a museum or a story. Together it is a living community.

Two green calabashes on the branch of a calabash tree, against grass and shrubs.
The calabash, on the tree. This is where it begins. Hollowed out, dried, and carved, it becomes a kúya: a bowl, a spoon, a drinking cup — tangible heritage that you can hold. But which fruit you pick, when, and which pattern belongs in it: that is written nowhere. That is the intangible part, and it exists only in people.

Tangible tangible

What you can hold, enter, or excavate.

  • Tembe — wood carving on doors, benches, paddles, and houses
  • Pangi — textiles and the patterns laid into them
  • Calabash art — carved bowls and spoons
  • The villages themselves — layout, building methods, burial grounds
  • Kumako — the first Saamaka village, an archaeological mound with finds from the eighteenth century
  • Owru Ganzee — and what has lain beneath the reservoir since 1965

Intangible intangible

What exists only as long as someone does it, says it, or passes it on.

  • Saamakan — first recorded in 1778, one of the earliest documented creole languages
  • Oral history — who came from where, and how people became free
  • Songe, awasa and mato — music, dance, and the art of storytelling
  • Gi pangi and gi kamsa — rituals around the stages of life
  • Plant knowledge — medicine that has never been written down
  • The Afaka script — developed by the Ndyuka, the only script ever created for a creole language

The intangible is the most fragile, because it disappears with people. That is why this project begins with recording and not with building.

From the archive

A man in a boat above his own village

Footage exists of someone describing how it was. Berry Vrede sailed over the reservoir and spoke about Owru Ganzee, the village he comes from and that now lies at fifty metres' depth. That is precisely the bridge this project wishes to build: from what was there to what is still possible.

Berry Vrede on his drowned village

Sailing over the reservoir, Berry Vrede talks about Ganzee, his birth village, which had to make way for the dam that was to bring Suriname cheap electricity.

Watch the episode at Andere Tijden

Andere Tijden, Leven in koloniaal Suriname – deel 1, NTR, 17 November 2015. Fragment ID POMS_NTR_11989874. Rights held by NTR — consent is required for use on this site; for now there is only a reference.

News from Suriname: the reservoir behind the Brokopondodam

News footage from 1964: a community hall, church, and dwellings half submerged as the lake fills. Two minutes, and it shows what happened.

Watch at Open Beelden

Nieuws uit Suriname: stuwmeer achter Brokopondodam, by Polygoon-Profilti (producer) / Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision (custodian), 1 May 1964, via Open Beelden. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Netherlands. Note: the half-submerged church in this clip is that of Koffiekamp, not of Owru Ganzee.

There is a second thread: in Verborgen Verleden (NTR, 19 February 2022), NOS presenter Simone Weimans travels by korjaal to the sunken Ganzee, whilst a letter by Berry Vrede is read aloud. There too, the church of the Evangelical Brotherhood is the subject.

The house in Boxel

Who lives there

Girls from Brokopondo and Sipaliwini, who would otherwise not have been able to go beyond the MULO in their own area. During the week they live in the Baling Soela Meisjes Internaat on Gerardstraat in Boxel, and attend school in the city.

In October 2024, Minister Steven Mac Andrew made a working visit to the boarding house. The report of that visit identifies the limited living and study space as a bottleneck.

The residents of the boarding house together on the bench in front of the building
Resident of the boarding house in the garden
Resident of the boarding house, laughing among the greenery
Resident of the boarding house beside the flowering shrub
Resident of the boarding house wearing a headscarf, beside a flowering shrub
Resident of the boarding house among the yellow flowers
Resident of the boarding house on the swing
Resident of the boarding house in an orange shirt, with braids pinned up
Resident of the boarding house in a floral top, by the veranda
About these photographs. All images on this page have been published with the written consent of those involved and, where they are minors, of their parents or guardian. We do not place names alongside faces, nor any details by which a person could be traced. Anyone who wishes an image to be removed need not give a reason: one message is enough.

Who does this

Three people

Captain Ifna Gavuna Vrede, traditional authority among the Saamaka

Captain Ifna Gavuna Vrede

Born in Owru Ganzee, shortly before that village disappeared beneath the reservoir. Traditional authority among the Saamaka and one of the few women to have been sworn in as captain. She served as Director of the Ministry of Regional Development — the ministry responsible for the interior and traditional authority. She runs the boarding house.

Follow her on Facebook

Paramaribo

Soulamy Laurens, sociologist

Soulamy Laurens MSc

Sociologist with a master's degree in sociology from the Anton de Kom University of Suriname, specialising in research methodology. The connection with the university.

Paramaribo

Lady Ugianty Vrede

Lady Ugianty Vrede

Ifna's youngest daughter. From Belgium, the link with Europe: partners, funds, and the diaspora.

Belgium

From public sources

The public record

Facts only, each with a source and a year.

  1. 1984 — The Baling Soela Meisjes Internaat is founded. It then lies dormant for years, until it revives under the leadership of Ifna Vrede; she has kept it running ever since. (Suriname Herald, 24 August 2024)
  2. 2012 — As the poet Gavuna she appears in the poetry collection Puu a döö, alongside Dorus Vrede. (Puu a döö, 2012)
  3. 2013 — On 5 June, Starnieuws reports that director Ifna Vrede of the Ministry of Regional Development is to be sworn in as captain within the Saamaka community on 8 June at Brownsweg by granman Belfon Aboikonie, from the Awanna lo. (Starnieuws, 5 June 2013)
  4. 2020 — The Surinamese government names her as vice-chair of the Stichting Samaaka Daka and captain of the district of Brokopondo. (gov.sr, September 2020)
  5. 2025 — As chair of the foundation behind Saamaka Daka, the annual commemoration of the peace treaty of 19 September 1762, she stands in Drepada in September before eight ministers and the granman. (Suriname Herald, 22 September 2025; De Ware Tijd, 14 September 2025)
  6. 2026 — During a ministerial working visit to Brokopondo, the Surinamese government writes: "Captain Ifna Vrede, too, made a valuable contribution to the discussion." (gov.sr, 15 June 2026)

About this initiative

Accountability

This initiative is carried by the three people above: Captain Ifna Gavuna Vrede and Soulamy Laurens MSc in Paramaribo, and Lady Ugianty Vrede in Belgium. The boarding house, the archive and this project belong to the community; what we cannot deliver, we do not promise.

There is as yet no Surinamese foundation. Without a legal entity there is no bank account in the project's name and no application can be submitted — and that is why we are not asking for money at this point either. Donations can be made once the foundation has been registered. From that moment, this is where the foundation details, the chamber of commerce number, the board, the policy plan and the annual figures will appear; that is also a requirement for ANBI status.

For images the rule is: consent first, then the camera. Material is published only with the written consent of those involved — where they are minors, also of a parent or guardian — and of the community, and is marked with labels that the carriers themselves draw up. We do not place names alongside faces, nor any details by which a person could be traced. Archive footage always carries a source attribution alongside the clip. Anyone who wishes an image to be removed need not give a reason: one message is enough.

What is needed now

The water first

In heavy rain the boarding house floods, and with the water the boundary between the ditch and the grounds disappears. Before anything else can be done, that must be resolved. In addition, the management will be put on a proper legal footing: a Surinamese foundation, with a bank account in the name of that foundation. Without that, nothing can be applied for and nothing can be received.

What the water will cost, we do not yet know. That assessment is under way, and we will not attach a figure to it before there is one. The three amounts below are what is established.

Donations can be made once the foundation has been registered.

Get in touch

Your details go directly to our own inbox and are not stored anywhere else. Prefer to e-mail directly? You can reach us at gavunavrede@gmail.com.

Phase 1 · the flooding of the boarding house Support