Amazing Quest: Stories from Suriname | Somewhere on Earth: Suriname | Free Documentary

foreign [Music] foreign [Music] it's one of the greenest countries on Earth an El Dorado of river and Forest where the possibilities seem endless Suriname in the Amazon is one of the last Frontiers and the land of illegal gold panners for nature lovers this little country is a gold mine of biodiversity in the image of its extremely mixed population the heart of the Amazon perog or airplane are the only ways to plunge deep into this endless Forest tinged with Adventure the Amazon is a boundless Universe it never ends there was always something further ahead you advance and it keeps on going foreign [Music] Fabian vas is a buru a white descendant of suriname's original Dutch colonists he has decided to capture the beauty of his little known country my job is traveling the length and breadth of Suriname to fix the country's most beautiful sights on film foreigners don't even know where Suriname is it's located on the northern coast of South America between Guyana friends Guiana and Brazil America traveling in Suriname is always an expedition the infrastructure is poor and there are hardly any roads you have to use the rivers to get around that's why traveling here is always full of surprises and it makes the country interesting this is a land of Adventure to heaven Fabian loves the Wilderness and exploring unknown territories photography and the people he meets in his life he has made a name for himself in this little country flanked by the Amazon on one side and the warm Waters of the Atlantic Ocean on the other when you're a stranger and you enter a village the most important thing to do is be respectful before I start shooting in the village I have to go see the chief I have to thank him for allowing me to photograph the village and the villagers photography you have to respect the people explain to them exactly what you're going to do and be polite it's normal you're on their territory [Music] for Fabian his Adventure in photography is like a rebirth in a few months he'll be publishing his work 12 photos to the glory of Suriname photo reportage begins with the amerindian fisherman of galibi then plunges into the Limitless Forest where the young photographer's life nearly hit bottom [Music] of the boss I was panning for gold out in the forest for three years I needed money it was a great experience but I was always in danger it was really quite something I wouldn't sleep I'd be there in my hammock afraid of being attacked [Music] they lived in a selfie I was living in an encampment in a tent a canvas tarp that could be set up very quickly and just a plastic sheet to protect me from the Wind and Rain what it lived that was my shelter everything was dirty polluted I was eating poorly drinking bad water it was really not a healthy life okay women doing datability in one day there was a police raid he meant that the politics when the police came into the camp I grabbed all my stuff my papers and ran off into the forest I wanted to us I was in such a bad state that I broke down and cried that was a decisive moment and I knew I couldn't go on with that way of life I was afraid the police would catch me and lock me away and and around that's when I realized that it just wasn't worth the trouble and it was momentous a staggering moment even now when I think back on it [Music] gashes in the brown Earth polluted with Mercury this is the El Dorado of the illegal gold panners Fabian is a born-again ecologist who's now paying off his debt to Nature [Music] cake when I look back on my life before what I did then and what I'm doing now I feel good I'm a better person and feel better about my life I've done some shady things in the past now with my photography it's a whole new ball game I'm out in the forest in the middle of the trees and the people it's just all positive energy I feel it's my place thank you Fabian is traveling up the Suriname River one of the main arteries into the interior [Music] [Applause] [Music] it hasn't rained in weeks bad news for the boatmen in the dry season the Inland Villages are even more isolated from the rest of the World by the Rapids [Music] thank you [Music] foreign I love traveling like this with no roads to get from one point to another when you leave the city you have to drive on dirt tracks then you have to take a perogue for several hours and cross the Rapids when the river's low you have to push the parole help the boatmen through the Rapids sometimes you even have to carry the pierogies foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] the descendants of slaves that ran away from the plantations more than 200 years ago during the colonial period The Maroons learned a lot from the Indians about surviving and adapting but now they have their own way of life it is this is a traditional Gateway designed to ward off evil spirit there must be a village close by foreign is it far yeah foreign [Music] [Music] this uh this um yes right here it's me um I'm a photographer would it be okay if I take some pictures yeah yeah sure no problem good thank you [Applause] foreign [Music] only in the north of Suriname in the region of the saramaka tribes people here don't have cars the only way to ship things around is by boat anything that we have to transport goes by parole that's why the villages are so close to the Riverbanks foreign the gold prospecting was my whole life and I wanted to eat that moment and I destroyed nature in the gold panning camps my back then I was a polluter I didn't realize what nature could offer me the Amazon is a boundless Universe it never ends there was always something further ahead you advance and it keeps on going [Music] broccopondo Lake a vast reservoir of fresh water is in otherworldly landscape a parcel of the sunken Amazon [Music] in the 1960s they built a dam on the Suriname River to provide electricity to the capital Paramaribo the bauxite mines and in particular an aluminum Factory are these Airlines those are islands over there they used to be Hills you have to imagine that this used to be a mountainous tropical landscape with the dam the water Rose and submerged everything in the valleys and the hills became Islands the trees underwater here this has been a sunken forest for more than 60 years [Music] Nature has stood still here in broccopondo when the tropical forest was submerged beneath fathoms of water no one imagined that they were in fact sinking a treasure Fabian has come to meet the men who are mining the rich vein of brocopondo I a handful of intrepid Brazilians all top-notch lumberjacks if the water is clear it's good we can work we can see what we're doing but if it's murky I Think It's Tricky when you're down at the bottom you're a little tired mine begins to drift get distracted this is not good you have to stay focused on your work and on the machine because if you let your mind wander you could lose an arm you can lose a leg [Music] oh treasurer of broccolpondo is down at the bottom of the lake mahogany Angelique amaranth millions of cubic meters of precious rare Woods of the Amazon [Music] as a general rule logging trees here is not good for nature but in this Lake you can just Serve Yourself all the trees are dead the tropical forest is as old as the world we have to protect it but here the wood has been underwater for a long time foreign [Music] it's not your ordinary Lumberjack who can work in these extreme conditions he has to handle the chainsaw underwater while breathing through an air hose connected to the compressor TAMU the Brazilian has arrived at the base of the tree 20 meters down foreign the long immersion in the water has made the wood rot proof and of a very high quality as hard as rock which makes it so valuable [Music] the lumber from brocopundo is some of the world's most expensive wood The Lumberjacks have worked for the next 20 years logging the sunken treasure of the Amazon [Music] I'm an adventurer I love going into the forest being there I really enjoy it it makes me happy adventure adventure and more Adventure [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] when I was young there was the the Siri flying doctors I think it's a very old series from the 70s or the 80s the nurses or the doctors take a take a plane to to save the patients and we always watch that series and I already knew I want to become a doctor I always wanted to become a doctor my father is a doctor and I really like the series so now it's um it's yeah it's like flying doctor and I think this is uh pretty close to to my dream I'm the flying doctor [Music] case [Music] I deliver everything the post sometimes rice for the people who work here but now we don't have but uh yeah we we take everything for the tribes of the Amazon the doctor always arrives by air and never empty-handed Roseanne per share 35 is surinam's only flying doctor she works for medisha zending a medical and humanitarian mission she crisscrosses the Amazon by plane helping the communities isolated in the vast tropical forest my specialization in tropical medicine and for that I went to Ethiopia and I always loved traveling so I've been to many countries in in Africa and I've been to India for a long time Roseanne has always preferred field medicine to a comfortable Consulting room in Amsterdam this is her profession and her passion and it has made her a kindly generous person Roseanne visits the village of apetina on the shores of the tapahoni river at least once a month the village practical nurse is there to greet her well when a child has an attack I treat him with a vaporizer and that um the parents have to know how to do it too he doesn't like doctor he's been in the hospital too long he doesn't like doctor he went to the City by emergency he's very ill and now he came back and luckily is healthy again but we see him every time we come here to check on him because we want to know how he's doing it's my my favorite kid in the village they're waiting for the doctor at the Infirmary with a portable ultrasound device Roseanne can monitor the pregnancies of the future mothers here in the heart of the Amazon okay you love your baby already right well I'm going to show it to you and measure it you wanted a boy foreign [Music] you see those three lines on the screen if it's a boy they'll usually be two little balls and one line three three step yes we've just figured out that it's a girl and now I'm looking for amniotic fluid but I don't see much it's not enough she needs to go to the city because she doesn't have a big belly [Music] um this young woman risks having problems in her late pregnancy Roseanne has to persuade the parents that it would be better to go to the city for the last few weeks before the birth [Music] sometimes they don't go because they're just they don't have a place to stay in the city they don't have the funding they they prefer staying with their family so sometimes in these areas we have very difficult labors because because of the people we advise to go to the city just stay here we understand that they stay here but for us it's better if they go to the city she knows and she's going to talk with her family about it Roseanne won't be back for a month the only way this future mother can give birth in the city is with the doctor's plane when the river is at its lowest it takes weeks by pierog to go from this Village to the capital for Roseanne and Andy her pilot the job means endless takeoffs and Landings [Music] Andy also Dutch gave up his real estate job in Europe to become a pilot for moth a Dutch Association that uses its Fleet of planes to help isolated communities the world over [Music] the service [Music] [Laughter] [Music] able stuff you know [Music] how many years already it's more than 50 years [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Laughter] it also [Music] to make [Music] it right [Music] three quarters of this little country's population lives in Paramaribo the capital [Music] this is where the headquarters of medisha's ending Roseanne's medical mission is located [Music] so we take this as um this is my ultra South and this is just material there's wood Oakland material for the Polyclinic for the patients some medications some equipment [Music] every time they set out it's an expedition the doctor's plane is not just a medical liaison it's a veritable Lifeline between the capital and The Villages Inland [Music] okay so today's trip is going from Paramaribo to kawamhaka and then we stayed at Bali mode and we went to tapu the next one I'm back foreign [Music] the village of kawamaka is an hour and a half from the capital in the region of upper Maroney this community of wayana Indians lives in the region where Suriname meets French Guiana this is where the borders start to become uncertain no one ever comes here apart from the illegal Prospectors of the Wildcat gold mines [Music] since the 1970s medicine's ending has been training a practical nurse in each amerindian Village to dispense Primary Health Care while waiting for the doctor to arrive and also to make sure the patients follow up on their treatment [Music] The Village Chief is also kawamaka's practical nurse some of the patients I see all all day all year so I see them coming and going and coming and going so when they come back we can chat but sometimes it's very busy and we have we don't have the time to really have this relationship building of the relationship but some of the people there are chronic patients so I see them a lot as the Practical Nurse Meep attends all Roseanne's consultations like all Village Chiefs his words are respected and heated he's a very important person for this Village and for the area and he's a very good nurse so he's my uh my support in bad times you can call me all the time he calls me sometimes for accidents or other things happening and yeah he knows what he's doing so that's cool one lazy so I'm prescribing one pill per week okay oh yes you like to love you Roseanne has a two-year-old son and is expecting her second child this has changed her status in the eyes of the Indian women AC Bernard yeah I'm five months pregnant and um well now they sometimes they see sometimes they don't but they like it very much because it makes me more a woman than a doctor so they yeah they think I'm more one of them than because I'm also pregnant and not a doctor who visits and goes back to the city so yeah [Music] oh you see my this works gives me great pleasure and great energy and so I keep active as long as I keep active I hope Clary say good lava the first time I came here they were very shy because it's very shy people very introvert people but as you come as they see you come back and back and back and they return and you see they see that you you take interest in their culture and their families in in their health then they open up a bit and you can talk more about life and family [Music] anyways [Music] Roseanne has just received an emergency call she has to cut shorter consultations to go help a young woman who's having problems in labor it will be a 40-minute flight [Music] so now we have an ambulance waiting for the doctor if she is ready with the patients right now we can go well we have uh two very sick patients in different places different areas in Suriname so we're living here now and going to fetch them and there's an ambulance waiting in paramilo to get them to the hospital where [Music] yeah it's a life and death situation and Roseanne is in a Race Against Time she doesn't know anything about the mother or baby's condition when they land The Village practical nurse fills her in it seems that the baby is out of danger but not the young mother every year they carry out 200 medical evacuations through the Skies over the world's largest Forest foreign don't worry you'll come back [Music] you may need an operation you know [Music] come back you have to be brave okay you want some water if she wants to lie down she can go over to the other side [Music] I think when you decide to become a doctor you also want to help people and in some countries it's just your help is very useful it's more useful than maybe in in Holland so that's why and I think now we're here in the middle of the Amazons they really appreciate my help [Music] here the people just live day by day they take life as it comes and they they cherish it and for me that's very it's a very valuable lesson that you should always yeah appreciate your day as it comes I can contribute more than maybe I could staying in Holland [Music] [Music] Monique Poole is a heroine in her country because she is a defender of the Amazon's emblematic animal the sloth foreign s are doing a lot of damage to the to Nature and I think this is the best thing we can do we have to help these animals back into the wild where they can live so I'm I'm really glad to be sort of a taxi driver for a wildlife they are a symbol for me of the vulnerability of nature and of how important it is for us to protect nature and and the animals in it [Music] this animal always seems to be smiling and it has a Charming peaceful nature it's incredibly slow pace is due to its diet the sloth spends all its time digesting its food out in her yard Monique is caring for a dozen sloths picked up from the center of Paramaribo then she releases them into their natural habitat thanks to her actions she was shortlisted for CNN hero of the year we started 10 years ago when I lost the dog and I went looking for my dog and then I I found a baby sloth and that's how I I then became involved in learning what was happening to them why were they in trouble so when there is a problem all the other animals can fly away or run away but they they cannot so they will stay in the tree until it gets pushed over Monique's yard is a little Noah's Ark a Haven for the more fragile creatures of the forest foreign she also shelters porcupines anteaters plus one giant anteater vulnerable endangered species from Central and South America Monique Poole's nickname is the sloth lady over the past 10 years she has saved hundreds of animals little by little a team of volunteers formed around her and they created a foundation green Heritage fund Suriname she may not be a biologist but she has become one of the world's foremost experts on sloths so enough about the populations only recently we found that this species that we have in Suriname the three-toed sloth is only limited to the guyanas to Brazil and Venezuela before we thought it at a much larger range and so we don't really know all that much here at the coast we see a lot of animals so we even don't know really what the distribution is so that's why we're trying to do research on on where they are what they do and we work together with all researchers in the area here four years ago Monique carried out her most memorable rescue she had been alerted that about 10 animals were in the woods close to the city but nothing went as planned Monique filmed the whole sequence if this was in 2012 and We rescued a lot of animals from a very small piece of land only seven hectare and they were really a lot of animals a lot of sloats but almost 200 animals in seven hectare of land in the city the operator was very nice because he was really looking for the trees not to fall down but pushed them onto other trees so that the animals wouldn't be heard two we found later were dead but then most of them were just completely unharmed maybe scared but that was it [Music] [Music] Monique also has another passion about 40 kilometers up from the Open Sea the Estuary of the Suriname river is home to a rare endemic marine mammal [Music] there [Music] the Guyana dolphin is very difficult to observe twice a month at dawn Monique does a nose count of this little sedentary School of dolphins foreign the Dolphins and trying to to see where they live what they do during the day and see what they eat what affects them they come they look at you then they go and do their business they go and swim and then sometimes they come if they're very happy or want to show off a new baby then the baby comes and shows itself it's very special this is I think it's the whole of South America a unique River for this type of dolphin Monique passes on her observations to French scientists studying the Guiana Dolphins they recognize the value of her work even though she is not a scientist actually since I was a little child I always loved nature I wanted to become a biologist but then I studied something else I studied languages so this is like still my passion from being a child now to still be close to Nature and be able to do something for nature if it's really a fantastic [Music] [Music] SOS sloths in danger every week Monique gets dozens of calls to pick up stray animals in the city and yards or houses all settings where the sloths can't survive it's an emergency and the people are worried about it either maybe because they have dogs maybe they have small children and so they are maybe afraid we will find out when we get there [Music] [Music] so we were able to um to catch him after we agreed after we agreed on how we would be doing it so I because I know how they behave so we were able to do it much faster than before before I didn't really know and now I know so then it's easy to get them into the cage this is a two-toed sloth the biggest and feistiest when threatened they're very likable animals that's surely why Monique's work is so popular in this land of sloths yeah [Music] today Monique is going to set free the very healthy sloth they picked up in town these animals do not belong in the city we are encroaching on their habitat so there's a human animal conflict there and the best thing we can do for them is to bring them to a forest of which we know that is not going to be cut and where they can live for many many years so every animal we get if it's healthy it will go back to the forest like this she is she knows she's like okay open it open it huh he's looking around there to see what is his new home so it's really uh looking where's food where is a good place to sleep and where where can I stay safe well this is his new home he comes from the city so now he's back in the trees where he's he will be happy this is the most amazing moment of every rescue because this is where they belong and So within a few minutes you're not able to see them but you know they're there you know these little friends I have that they are there they're watching me and it's just a fantastic idea this is where they belong you can see their whole face are exchanging their energy they love this is this is their hope so this is the best moment the best moment of every every animal that we get is when we can let it go back to the forest Monique has managed to buy a small parcel of Amazonian Forest thanks to the green Heritage fund she's planning to build a large refuge for sloths here in a few months when she has collected enough money in order to ease their return to the wild foreign [Music] what makes me want to protect this is because it's first of all it's very beautiful and I think we humans we need Beauty as well and not just Beauty from humans who make more beautiful things but you the beauty of nature and so that's why we need to preserve it to be healthy humans we need to have forests like this that we generate us and give us energy [Music] Monique came here to feel the pulse of the forest Atop The volksberg Dome day she'll write her story the story of a woman in love with the sweetest and gentlest of animals the Amazonian sloth foreign just to complete at ease This Is Where We Belong I think this is this is the most beautiful place in the world I think [Music] [Music] [Music] to me [Music] because [Music] foreign [Music] [Music]

Channel: Free Documentary

Views: 576,620

Keywords: Free Documentary, Documentaries, Full documentary, HD documentary, documentary - topic, documentary (tv genre), somewhere on earth, amazing stories, amazing stories from Suriname, amazing quest, Suriname

Id: 35-P5ZwP4Zg

Length: 51min 50sec (3110 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 10 2023

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