Jennifer Simons Could Become Surinam’s Next President
Here’s How It Felt to Meet Her
I will never recover from the culture shock, after an 11-hour non-stop flight, from the Netherlands, to the edge of South America, in #Surinam.
Everybody looked exactly like me. Had I traveled so far, just to get home?
Hearing fluent Dutch spoken all around the airport, yet without seeing a single white person, felt strange.
Confusion grew even more, when I arrived in the capital city - 6 different ethnicities, including Indonesian and Chinese types, yet all were collectively Surinamese.
There I met Dr Jennifer Geerlings-Simons. Speaker of the National Assembly, she is a dermatologist, and I’m a public health doctor, so we connected. I was working as Team Leader for a UNICEF assignment with their Department of #PublicHealth.
The party of Simons had just approved the development of a National Safe Motherhood and Newborn Health Action Plan, which outlined the need for evidence-based communication about Breastfeeding.
Dr. Simons’ passion was self-evident. It was also personal: despite her busy schedule as a doctor and political leader, she herself had breastfed her own children up to 2 years. “I had to actively resist the pressure by nurses to introduce my grandchild to commercial milk within 30 minutes after birth. That was because of my position as a doctor. But what would an ordinary grandparent or mother do?”
She encouraged me to investigate the mortality & risk statistics that show the comparative advantages of exclusive breastfeeding, and abundant local alternatives for more healthy nutrition.
For the next 2 months, I felt at home. From #Paramaribo to the eastward province of Commewijne, I drove over one of their most important infrastructure projects, the Jules Wijdenbosch Bridge. Until now, the only way to get across the Suriname River was by ferry. Like many other colonized countries around the world, colonization itself produced very little infrastructure except whatever was essential for resource extraction.
New policies such as the Simons-backed #MaternalNeonatalandChildHealth strategy for Infant and Young Child Feeding, and this 1,504 meter long bridge built by one former president, prove the impact of independent indigenous #leadership.
In the Netherlands, the widely read NOS #election analysis is riddled with overt aspersions and covert insinuations about corruption. They predict the Surinamese political class is only attracted to office to steal newly discovered petrodollars. Paradoxically, Dutch oil company Shell actually has 100 years of complicity in Niger Delta oil spills, not to mention several corruption cases being litigated away from mainstream media.
Surinam still has to overcome a river of fast-moving economic & political challenges bridged solely by the long-lasting will of Surinamese people.
Today, there are parliamentary elections and Simons is the new leader of the NDP, formerly led by Bouterse, who died half a year ago. By the time you’re reading this, Jennifer Simons could have become their first woman President.
I wish Surinam success in this next chapter of political evolution.
We should support the power of the people anywhere, to develop themselves in their own best interests.