LALLA ROOKH
An ongoing journey
On June 5, 2023, it will be exactly 150 years ago that the sailing ship Lalla Rookh (Red Cheeks), named after a fictional Mughal princess, anchored in the mouth of the Suriname River in Paramaribo. The very first Hindustani contract workers were on board. Many of them were also full of good hopes and dreams for this new era, but after the abolition of slavery, the more than 30,000 men, women and children eventually became nothing more than the 'new slaves' through complicated international constructions. The journey to justice is still a very long one, but today the story as a whole is also seen as a success story by many descendants of indentured servants. A story in which sacrifices have been made and repetitive partings still make life complicated and hard at times.
THE OLD PLANTATIONS
When you visit the old plantations in Suriname today, you meet (grand) children of the first contract workers. Until its closure, the Mariënburg plantation was a public company and, legally speaking, the ex-workers were never officially fired or paid in full. Many of them still live in poor conditions in the former, sometimes almost 200 years old, 'slave barracks' where their great-grandparents also lived. They often still work on the plantations, as guides, but especially in maintenance. The vegetation has continued to overgrow the old machines and buildings for decades. The lawnmowers as they called themselves still work with old machetes for insufficient compensation in a country with violently high inflation. Besides having a vegetable garden, alone or with others, there are also those who mainly depend on donations from the tourists who visit the plantations.
