Mi bi feni Gwamba(I found meat)!

"I found gwamba(meat)!"--Me
"No, I found gwamba."--Saramacan Caselli
"No, you killed it, I found it."--Me
"Oooooo, true."--Saramacan Caselli

Just a few days ago I was tending to my garden which is slowly but surely drying up and falling victim to the dry season which has recently begun here in September, which the Saramacans call wajamaka liba(iguana month). While at my garden, I learned why the month of September is named for the iguana. Walking around and aatering some of my plants, I noticed several foreign holes which were being burrowed into my ground by some kind of creature. While I was tending to a local vegetable called kosbanti, a Surinamese string bean, I noticed there was something long and green sticking out of one of the holes. Upon further inspection, I realized it was the tail of a pretty sizable iguana!

Now, this story would not be told properly without the proper background. When arriving in Saramaca and walking around the villages I noticed that everyone would greet me, ask me what I ate and inquire if I had any gwamba(meat). Gwamba is any kind of meat but generally refers to the three available meats in the interior: fish, chicken and any kind of bush meat. One woman in particular, a very traditional Saramaca woman of 90 years old whose Saramacan name means Rice, began ascending the path up the hill to my house every morning to see if I had found her any gwamba or if I had woken up with a woman. When she finds out neither has passed she then begins to tap her walking stick on the ground as if to take some kind of notes on me and then lets out a "wellllll baaaa(well brother)", and then proceeds to jokingly bust my chops for a few minutes before sauntering off on her morning loop around the village. One morning, I rose before she did and went out into the jungle with my counterpart and a tourist we were taking on a nature walk. Upon our arrival from the jungle and into the village we passed this 90 year old woman's house and she commented that she couldn't believe what the times had come to when three young people could go into the jungle with weapons and not come out with any meat. She then began to fantasize about what we actually did in the jungle and I was a little creeped out by her fantastic imagination. On one other occassion she was pretty disappointed to find out that I had a machette in hand when I came across a massive iguana at my doorstep and did not kill it. My reputation as a hunter in the village was pretty much at an all-time low, even my fish caught count over the year is -1 since I have not caught any and dropped one in the river that one of the kids had given me to hold.

But, as the Saramacans say, my foot knocked a good thing. Stumbling across this iguana, I thought I was ill-equiped since I left my machette at a neighboring tourist camp across the river. Since all I had was a half bucket of water I ran back into the village where a meeting had just ended with the village captain and some of his assistants, the basias. I told a few of the guys what I had found and then they started working towards my garden, without machettes! So three of these guys showed up, my counterpart and two guys in the village who came for the vacation: Benz and Caselli. So we approach the hole and my counterpart is instructing Caselli how to go about getting the iguana out of the hole. Caselli follows the instructions about as well as I would have, in other words he didn't follow the instructions. So Caselli grabs the thing by the tail with one hand and my counterpart yells at him to twirl it around and make a loop like a laso with the iguana's tail so it won't try to swing itself around and knock him. He does and the iguana remains still. So the guys call me over and they give me an anatomy lesson for the iguana, "squeeze the belly, that's where the eggs are". So I squeeze the belly and it's pretty squishy. Then, they took the iguana and placed him on the ground and began knocking him with a stick until it was dead... no machette, crazy guys!

So I am walking through the village with the guys and we're showing off the iguana. We pass the 90 year old woman's house, who coincidentally is not at home to see me pass by with my trophy, go figure. All the meanwhile, myself and Caselli are arguing over whose iguana it is. I say I found it, he says he found it, then I say I found it but he killed it and he laughs and then agrees. And so next morning's breakfast in the village: iguana and iguana eggs. So at last: mi bi feni gwamba fii, mujee(I found meat for you, woman)!