The yard
By Daisy Hedwig Liong-A-Kong
I was born on September 18, 1936 in Paramaribo on the Wagenwegstraat. (After the death of doctor JF Nassy the name of the Wagenwegstraat changed from the Stoelmanstraat to Dr. JF Nassylaan and the number of the house became 111).
On the yard there were eleven houses, three on the street side and eight on the yard. Our family lived in one of the houses on the street side. Against our house there was also a house, which was inhabited by my married sister Helouise and her husband, George Jap Tjong and two children Ronnie and Jean.
Furthermore, there lived a clockmaker Jong-Loy, a printer named uncle Louis (Ferrier) and others. On the yard were also 1 apple tree, 1 cherry tree, 1 bredebon (man of words) and 2, a white and a brown, star apple trees.
There were also six privies, also called toilets, kumakoisi's ('convenience houses') or plee and a yard tap. There were also six bathrooms and 1 dot' ipi (garbage heap) where the residents deposited their household waste. When you went to bathe, you first had to tap a basin of water and check whether the bathroom was free. The children and others had to enter the house through the yard gate, also called negre doro. The front door was only intended for teachers, doctors, practitioners (lawyers) and other dignitaries.
We didn't have electricity then, so studying was done in the evenings with a koko lampu. There was no radio either. There were gas lanterns as street lighting. Around 18:00 an employee would come by bike with a stick with a hook attached to it to light the lanterns. Because of the vulnerability of the street lanterns, football was not allowed on the street; the lamps were often broken by the balls.
Our house
The house consisted of a downstairs and upstairs apartment. Downstairs there was a bedroom for mom and dad, a front room where the girls slept on mattresses at night, a dining room and a kitchen (kukru). The kitchen was a room with a small extension with a window that was kept open by means of a stick. In the extension there was a coal pot in which cooking was done with charcoal. For ironing clothes, the solid iron irons were heated in the fire of the coal pot. The dining room was also called gadri or gallery. In it was a long table with a long bench on either side where the family sat to eat.
The roof of our house consisted of two parts, namely a higher part for the upper structure and a lower part for the lower structure. The apple tree had grown so much that some branches hung on the roof of the lower structure. So I often went to study my lessons on the lower roof in the afternoon and ate the apples in the meantime: what an instructive/foody period!
Furthermore, on the street side of the house there were three windows with windows with blinders (wooden shutters), two of which were in the front room and one in the gallery. At that time, Suriname did not have burglar bars, since there were not that many thefts. On the outside were the windows, which were often closed with a bolt, and on the inside were the windows with blinders. The old people often sat behind the blinders to keep an eye on who was passing by.
To be continued…
Thanks to Ricardo Liong who helped with the editing