Wei Wosu (House Dedication)

On “Second Christmas” (December 26^th), a couple in our village dedicated their new house. Meet Bon (pronounced "Bone") and Denisa:

Bon works for the government and Denisa owns a fabric store in the village about a 20 minute walk from our village. They worked and saved and built themselves this western style home:

Their old house is Saramaccan style, like ours, with two small rooms. They have at least four children.

True to Saramaccan tradition, the family and a few close friends are wearing the designated material that they made into clothing, which, not coincidentally matches the lime green house. Pretty awesome.

The church leaders, Basia Jonathan and Mama Nina blessing the home

The beautiful cross-stitching commonly done by Saramaccan women is used to decorate the new house

 The dedication consisted of the church leaders blessing the home, praying for the family, singing some hymns, then passing out soda, kool-aide, cake, popcorn (for the kids), and rum (for the men). It was fun. This is the first dedication that Ryan and I have seen. I think it is fairly common but houses just are not completed every day.

 Side note: our entire village was burned to the ground in the civil war in 1989. Apparently, there used to be many western style homes before then. When people came back (the few that did), most could only afford to build Saramaccan houses right away. Families will save and slowly build bigger houses but it takes years. If you walk around our village you will see plenty of partially built cement homes that the jungle has reclaimed. They are just waiting until the family has a little bit more money to buy another bag of cement or support beam.

I am glad that we decided to spend Christmas in our village this year. Although they do not do a whole lot for Christmas besides go to church (actually, kind of refreshing), it seems that many other events are packed in since family and friends who live in Paramaribo are able to come. It has been a prosperous and busy time in our usually sparse and slow paced village.