A Story of Sloth

I have been in the Peace Corps for the past two years in Suriname, South American. I lived in a hut in a village on a river in the jungle. The people of my village were Maroons, descendants of African slaves that escaped from Dutch plantations maybe three-hundred years ago. It was a simple life with kerosene lamps and outdoor toilets and no refrigerators that often reminded me of my sweet childhood in Leon County in the forties. I was there to help them with anything they asked me to do, and I did that, but it still left time for lying about in my hammock reading or left to amuse myself however I might. My commitment was for two years and there was procedure and ceremony in closing this service. One of my hoops to jump through was to make a presentation to Peace Corps Staff detailing my activities of the past two years. Or, I could write a ‘Volunteer Success Story’. The story option seemed much less painful than standing in front of Staff for twenty minutes explaining, in a politically correct fashion, that I had spent a lot of time lying in my hammock reading. This is the story that allowed me to leave Peace Corps in grace.

During my two year tour as a Peace Corps Volunteer on the lower Upper Suriname River I have participated in two or three projects that could, in truth, be described as successful. But the story of any of these would be a long, tedious account of hard travel between village and city for endless meetings with villagers, Peace Corps Staff, and NGO’s, in planning, writing, rewriting and submitting proposals to potential sponsors in the search for funding. Then happily, when they were funded, actually doing the construction or training, and then at completion, usually a celebration. The same format for the same tasks for every project. Any one of them would be a dull story that you wouldn’t enjoy very much. So, I have chosen, instead, to tell a shorter, simpler, sweeter story of success.

In the course of every volunteer’s training he visits an incumbent volunteer in his home at site to get a feel of what life’s really like in a village on the river. This is what brought a nice young couple of SUR16’s, Lindsay and Ryan, to Abena to spend a few days with me. They made themselves even more endearing by handing me an envelope from PC that had $70 SRD in it. Or in practical terms seven cold djugos. Don’t know what the money was for. Doesn’t matter. You don’t look a gift djugo in the mouth.

I showed Lindsay and Ryan everything; how to paddle my dugout canoe, my secret oatmeal recipe, and the pure delight of a hot bath from my solar shower bag. We walked the village odieodieing all the villagers, seeing all the points of interest, and exploring all the trails.

One morning walking home through the village on our way back from visiting the Poli Clinic in Sokonale an old woman friend of mine hollered at us, “Opa Jack! Peace Corps! Ko aki! Luku, luku!”

Three women, two kids, and now the three of us, all crowded around staring at a furry lump on the ground, a newly captured “silo” or sloth. How nice, a cute new pet for the kids. “No, no”, the women said, “They are stupid and have terrible claws. Not a pet, lunch!”

We Americans exchanged glances to see how the image of eating something that has big brown eyes in an almost human face and constantly smiles at you was sitting with each other. Not that well. We stared in sad, silent astonishment for a minute.

Then gradually an idea formed. “Maybe you would sell me your silo. He’s really small and kinda thin. Couldn’t be worth much. How much would you take?” The women conferred and came up with a first asking price of thirty dollars. I’m sure I could have bargained them down to twenty but I had seventy dollars worth of free money in my pocket so I accepted their offer immediately. We were now the proud new owners of a sloth!

The women threw in their sloth carrying stick and instructions for getting the hair off him with boiling water for no additional charge. So Ryan, a big strapping guy, was designated our sloth-on-a stick carrier and we marched happily home with our new best friend/lunch.

After a photo session, we took him down to the creek on the Pambo-oko Pasa and a hundred yards more off the main trail into the jungle and set him free. Now he didn’t look like fuzzy lunch anymore but a beautiful wild creature back in a wild place again.

Is there a moral to the story? May be. If there is, maybe it’s that you can’t save the whole world but sometimes you can save a little piece of it.