Nickerie. It is all about the harvest, rice harvest so it seems...
It is rice harvest season this time of year, and also the period when children of all surroundings of West Suriname will visit the children's book fair. The quiet green of the fields seems in contrast with the hard working men in their combines and on their trucks, driving on and off into the rice fields. A plate of rice will never be the same for me again as I watch these hard working men, from dawn too late in the evening. Every rice grain will taste of hard labor, of green fields, of 
sun and wind, of team effort, for all mouths
sun and wind, of team effort, for all mouths to feed, in Suriname and over our borders. It is all rice what's on my mind as I am confronted with big letters on a wall.. it is not just letters.. these are words..this is a poem.
Words by the famous Surinamese poets Dobru and Shrinivasi written on the walls of the WIN building of the Cultural Center of Nickerie. When standing close I can see letters, like rice grains, filling the wall with more letters, becoming words, becoming sentences. Moving a little further away from the wall the sentences become alineas and much further all of this becomes a poem. Suddenly every letter has a meaning, the b of bruine zandweg (brown sand path) in Shrinivasi's poem is not just a 'b'. It is carefully painted, a black curly peace of art work is planted in the beige wall. When sunlight hits the 
wall the words seem to dance in the air the longer you look at it.
wall the words seem to dance in the air the longer you look at it. Letters holding hands, waving, finding each other in a structure to become a poem. Dobru and Shrinivasi connected the thoughts in their mind in the art of words, thread the words to become a field of words we call poem. I harvest every word from the wall, with my camera, with my eyes with my mouth, speaking it out loud in the heat of the one o'clock afternoon sun. I know in twenty-four hours lots of children visiting the children's book fair will be here, on this spot and will meet with these walls of words. It will never be just a poem again. It will be like a rice field, to take care of, reading every word carefully, tasting the meaning of the poet, harvesting every sentence and never spill one letter of it.
Karin Lachmising
