Tucked away, deep within the Suriname rainforest is a village, so singular in its essence, so deeply penetrating in its spirit – sometimes I can still feel its sticky-sweet air, its other-worldliness, carried over by the wind into my modern life in America. In those moments, memories of the village of Apetina shape my lips into the curve of eternal gratitude.



I visited Apetina in 2007 and simply fell in love. Its inhabitants were cautious with me at first – even as I threw open my arms to them. No doubt, they were weary of exploitation. In fact, I visited this village as a volunteer for the Kuluwayak Organization, a community non-profit organization that seeks to benefit the village and tribal population.



As a result of this visit, I was able to generate increased awareness about the Wayana community and its plight via a website that I designed, www.apetina.org. Similarly, I hope to commemorate the inhabitants of Apetina as they exist at this moment in time via this book. In it, you can sample a taste of the fare, you may peek into their culture and strive to understand them, to see how close the distance is between you and these Amer-Indians: a short stride, a toddler step, in fact.



My fear is that they may suffer - either from exploitation, or from neglect. Why do I care: because of my concern with universal civil liberties – that this community need not fade away into the oblivion of extinction. I also care because they touched me. The children ran after me, pulling on my camera strap and shirtsleeves. They tugged on my heart with their every-morning rendition of the Suriname national anthem, reverberating amidst the wilderness of the rainforest, between the potential for ignorance, and the prospect for success.



The Wayana tribe is a community belonging to the largely imperfect human race, so their issues are not tidy and their answers are not perfectly summed up. But the children of Apetina -- Ferida, Cederic, Romario, Petra – and countless more, represent all that is good in the world, all who are hopeful and all who have faith. For their sake, let us do all that we can to understand and preserve their home: Apetina, Suriname.