THE SWEET ETHOS OF SURINAME

 

Suriname is a small country on the northern coast of South America, bordered by Guyana to the west, French Guiana to the east, and Brazil to the south. Its population of around 600,000 is made up largely of people of African, Indian, and Javanese origins, along with smaller communities from many other backgrounds. It is one of the few places in the world where Dutch is the principal language, while the cuisine reflects the remarkable diversity of its people. Nearly 93% of the country remains forested, and deep within these immense rainforests live indigenous communities whose cultures have endured for centuries.

I came to Suriname to explore whether I might contribute, in some small way, to warning indigenous communities about the dangers posed by industrialized food and the rapid spread of metabolic diseases.

What has overwhelmed me most, however, is the genuine friendliness of the people of this country, regardless of culture or ethnicity. It began quietly, with a lady in the hotel kitchen preparing something special for breakfast after noticing my interest in fresh food. Heavy rain disrupted our plans to visit the historic Jodensavanne, so when the skies finally cleared, I decided to walk through the streets of Paramaribo. Everywhere I went, people smiled warmly and had something pleasant to say.

At one point I noticed a sign for Tabiki Rum. Curious, I stepped closer, and someone immediately opened the door and invited me inside. As I examined copies of old maps dating back to 1599, we began speaking about the history of the region. The man turned out to be Rasmus, the co-owner and distiller of an original local rum. He invited me to taste it, and what followed was a long and fascinating conversation about Surinamese culture, the interior of the country, and its people. He showed me photographs from his journeys into the rainforest and spoke about the remarkable Werehpai caves, near the village of Kwamalasamutu in southern Suriname, where around 500 ancient petroglyphs have been discovered. The images, believed to be between 2,000 and 5,000 years old, were named by the local Trio people after an ancestral female hero.

While we talked, Surano, the bartender, prepared exotic cocktails with quiet enthusiasm. The “Tabiki Sizzle” was especially memorable; the freshness of mint mixed with the purity of the rum brought back memories of other tropical adventures across the world.

When I finally left, two hours later, I felt I had made a genuine new friend in this distant corner of South America. I walked back to the hotel buoyantly. The young receptionist, a university student, greeted me warmly and, knowing I would stay in for the evening, prepared a delicious meal for me herself.

What a day at Hotel Palacio.

CURING VS HEALING AN AFTERNOON AT AN INDIGENOUS CLINIC IN A RICH COUNTRY

 

Healing and curing are often used as if they were interchangeable, yet they arise from very different philosophical traditions. In Western biomedicine, curing usually means the elimination or control of disease through measurable intervention: a normal laboratory test, a smaller tumor, a repaired artery, a suppressed infection, a corrected blood sugar. It is objective, technological, quantifiable. The language of curing belongs to hospitals, radiology reports, pharmaceuticals, surgery, and evidence-based protocols.

Healing, however, is broader and older than modern medicine. Healing concerns the restoration of wholeness — physical, emotional, social, spiritual, relational, and cultural. A person may not be “cured” and yet may still experience healing. Likewise, a patient may be technically cured yet remain profoundly unhealed: anxious, alienated, fearful, lonely, culturally uprooted, or spiritually distressed.

This distinction becomes particularly visible when working among Indigenous peoples. In wealthy countries, Indigenous communities may have access to MRI scanners, advanced liver elastography, genomic medicine, insulin pumps, GLP-1 agonists, and sophisticated laboratories. Yet despite this abundance of technology, many patients still seek something beyond curing. They seek reassurance, meaning, trust, relationship, continuity, dignity, and relief from fear. They seek healing.

The elder who came to see me  illustrates this beautifully.

From the biomedical perspective, much had already been “cured” or at least dramatically improved:

• weight loss,
• reduction in hepatic fibrosis,
• normalization of liver enzymes,
• improved diabetes markers,
• better metabolic health.

Yet he remained anxious. The right-sided discomfort became, in his mind, the symbolic return of liver disease. The elevated blood pressure at the clinic reflected not merely vascular physiology but emotional tension and existential fear.

The healing occurred not through another scan or another laboratory test, but through presence.

I sat with him for 45 minutes.
I explained his success.
I interpreted the pain within the context of his lived experience.
I transformed frightening symptoms into understandable bodily sensations.
I restored confidence in his own body.

By the end of the encounter, his blood pressure fell from 132/78 to 118/68 — not because of antihypertensive medication, but because anxiety dissolved into trust. In many traditional Indigenous populations, blood pressures around 110–120 systolic are historically normal, especially among people living closer to ancestral dietary and social patterns. His body recognized safety.

That is healing.

Healing often contains several characteristics absent from purely curative medicine:

1. Relationship
   Healing is relational. It depends upon trust between healer and patient. The physician is not merely a technician but a witness and companion.
2. Meaning
   Healing gives suffering an intelligible narrative. Pain becomes understandable rather than terrifying.
3. Presence
   Time itself becomes therapeutic. The hurried biomedical model often underestimates the physiological effect of calm attention.
4. Cultural resonance
   Healing acknowledges the patient’s worldview, symbols, fears, traditions, and collective memory. Indigenous patients often interpret illness not only biologically but socially and spiritually.
5. Restoration of agency
   Healing allows the patient to feel again that they possess control over their body and destiny.
6. Reduction of fear
   Fear amplifies suffering. Reassurance grounded in truth can measurably alter physiology: blood pressure, pulse, cortisol levels, even pain perception.
7. Wholeness rather than eradication
   Healing asks: “Is this person at peace?” rather than merely “Has the pathology disappeared?”
   
   
   

The linguistic problem is fascinating because Romance languages often blur these distinctions.

In Spanish:

• Curar can mean both “to cure” and “to heal.”
• Sanar more closely approaches healing in the deeper sense of restoration and wholeness.

Thus:

• Curar una infección = to cure an infection.
• Sanar el alma or sanar una herida emocional = to heal the soul or an emotional wound.

Yet ordinary speech frequently mixes them.

In French:

• Guérir usually means both cure and heal.
• But la guérison in French can still carry emotional and existential overtones absent in English biomedical language.
• Sometimes expressions like soigner (to care for, to treat) better convey the ongoing process of attending to suffering rather than merely eliminating disease.

In Portuguese:

• Curar again often implies biomedical cure.
• Sarár or cicatrizar may imply recovery or healing in a broader or more organic sense.
• In Brazilian Portuguese especially, healing can also carry spiritual and communal meanings linked to Afro-Brazilian, Indigenous, and Catholic traditions.

English, paradoxically, preserves the distinction more sharply:

• Cure derives from the technical-medical tradition.
• Heal comes from Old English roots related to “whole,” the same linguistic family as health, hale, and holy.
  
  
  

Anthropologically, many Indigenous traditions never separated healing from community, spirituality, land, ritual, memory, and identity. Western medicine achieved astonishing success in curing disease but sometimes fragmented the human being into organs, laboratory values, and billing codes.

The ideal physician integrates both worlds:
to cure whenever possible,
and to heal always.

The encounter at the Wellness Centre reflects precisely this integration of culture into medical practice. Three clinicians working in metabolic medicine ( me, the diabetes educator and the dietitian) did more than manage fibrosis scores and blood pressure readings. we restored equilibrium between fear and understanding. The elder left not simply with improved numbers, but with restored inner calm, visible relief, and renewed trust in his own future.

That is the anthropology of medicine at its finest.

VIPASSANA MEDITATION. A REFLECTION

 

The widely quoted saying, "Yesterday is gone, tomorrow is not here, pay attention to today," is a modern summary of Buddhist teachings on mindfulness, heavily popularized by contemporary teachers like Thich Nhat Hanh, rather than a direct, word-for-word quote from the ancient Pali Canon. 

However, it perfectly reflects the core Buddhist philosophy found in the Bhaddekaratta Sutta (The Sutra on Knowing the Better Way to Live Alone). 

Here are the authentic teachings of the Buddha and modern interpretations of this wisdom:

1. The Core Teaching (Bhaddekaratta Sutta)

In the Bhaddekaratta Sutta (Majjhima Nikaya 131), the Buddha says: 

"Do not pursue the past.
Do not lose yourself in the future.
The past no longer is.
The future has not yet come.
Looking deeply at life as it is
In the very here and now,
The practitioner dwells in stability and freedom."

2. "Pay Attention to Today" (Heedfulness)

The Buddha emphasized that today is the only time we can act, cultivating what is known as appamāda (heedfulness or diligence). 

• The urgency of now: "Only try the hardest what needs to be done today. Who knows what death will bring tomorrow?"
• Not ignoring the future: Being present does not mean ignoring future needs, but rather doing today's work—including planning—with total awareness and attention, rather than anxiety. 

3. Why Dwell in the Present?

• Regret and Worry: The Buddha taught that dwelling on the past brings regret, while obsessing over the future creates anxiety.
• True Life: Life is only available in the present moment.
• Actionable Change: The only place where we can change our karma and make positive choices is the present. 

4. Popularized Interpretations

While often attributed simply to "Buddha" on social media, the specific phrasing is frequently associated with Thich Nhat Hanh and sometimes modern Tibetan teacher Tulku Lobsang Rinpoche, who taught that "life is just one day"—today is our whole life, from birth to death.

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VIPASSANA MEDITATION — A Reflection

I was drawn to Vipassana meditation after learning how much time Yuval Noah Harari dedicates to the practice. His teacher, S. N. Goenka, a Burmese practitioner in the lineage of Sayagyi U Ba Khin of Mandalay, brought this ancient technique into modern global consciousness.

The opening verses of the Bhaddekaratta Sutta (Majjhima Nikaya 131) express its essence:

Atītaṃ nānvāgameyya,
Nappaṭikaṅkhe anāgataṃ;
Yadatītaṃ pahīnaṃ taṃ,
Appattañca anāgataṃ.
Paccuppannañca yo dhammaṃ,
Tattha tattha vipassati;
Asaṃhīraṃ asaṅkuppaṃ,
Taṃ vidvā manubrūhaye.

“Do not pursue the past.
Do not lose yourself in the future.
The past no longer is.
The future has not yet come.
Looking deeply at life as it is,
In the very here and now,
The practitioner dwells in stability and freedom.”

For an admirer of Omar Khayyam of Nishapur, this teaching resonates deeply. His famous quatrain echoes the same wisdom:

Original Persian:
ای دوست بیا تا غم فردا نخوریم
وین یکدم عمر را غنیمت شمریم
فردا که ازین دیر کهن درگذریم
با هفت‌هزارسالگان هم‌سفریم

Transliteration:
Ey dūst biyā tā gham-e fardā nakhorīm
Vīn yek-dam-e omr rā ghanīmat shemarīm
Fardā ke azīn deyr-e kohan dargozerīm
Bā haft-hezār-sālegān ham-safarīm

FitzGerald’s rendering:
“Ah, my Beloved, fill the Cup that clears
To-day of past Regrets and future Fears:
To-morrow!—Why, To-morrow I may be
Myself with Yesterday’s Sev’n thousand Years.”

Across centuries and cultures, a shared insight emerges:

• Past regrets weigh us down — both the Buddha and Khayyam urge release.
• Future anxieties distract and distort — both counsel against their grip.
• The present moment is the only true field of experience — what Khayyam calls ghanīmat, a gift to be seized.

Another quatrain captures this succinctly:

“Unborn To-morrow, and dead Yesterday,
Why fret about them if To-day be sweet?”

In Vipassana, this is not merely philosophy but practice: the disciplined observation of reality as it unfolds, breath by breath, sensation by sensation. In Khayyam, it becomes poetry—lyrical, intoxicating, yet grounded in the same existential clarity.

Two voices—one from the forests of ancient India, the other from the gardens of Persia—converge on a single truth:
the art of living lies in inhabiting the present, fully and without illusion.

GOOD BYE RAGHU RAI THE GREAT PHOTOJOURNALIST FROM INDIA

 

Today, in the brief and indifferent cadence of BBC news, I read of the death of Raghu Rai. And yet, what stirred in me was not sorrow, but a quiet, almost private smile—like recognizing a passerby in a dream one had forgotten.

It was before the time when the world would come to name its fragility as COVID-19. I had gone, without urgency, to the Kadavumbagam Synagogue in Ernakulam—that patient structure which has outlived the certainties of those who built it. Since the 13th century, it has received prayers that no longer belong to anyone, and lamentations that no longer need to be understood.

Elias, the caretaker—custodian not only of walls but of time itself—said simply, “We have visitors today.”

They entered without ceremony. A tall man, slightly bent into himself, his glasses resting uncertainly above his brow, as though vision itself were a negotiable act. His eyes did not look—they gathered. Beside him, a woman of equal height and composed presence, as if she existed not beside him but in parallel.

Recognition came to me not as a fact, but as a hesitation. I had seen his books, yes—but more than that, I had seen the way he saw. And so I approached him not as one meets a man, but as one acknowledges a way of looking at the world.

We shook hands. It was an ordinary gesture, and therefore complete.

Now he is gone, and yet the moment remains, suspended somewhere between the visible and the remembered—like a photograph that was never taken, and therefore never fades.

ALAIN DE BOTTON. ON LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP AND FINDING ONESELF , THE LAST ONE MOST IMPORTANT

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRMcimuuk0Q.

In this talk, de Botton challenges the deeply ingrained romantic belief that successful relationships depend on finding the “right person.” Instead, he argues that this idea is a cultural illusion—one reinforced by films, songs, and modern dating culture—which overvalues instant compatibility and chemistry.

He proposes a more sober, almost therapeutic view: love is not a feeling we stumble into, but a skill we must learn. Compatibility is not the starting point of a relationship, but something that is gradually created through patience, effort, and mutual education.  

A central idea is that we are all psychologically “imperfect,” shaped by childhood patterns that influence whom we are drawn to. We often choose partners not because they are objectively ideal, but because they feel familiar—even when that familiarity includes difficulty or conflict.  

De Botton also critiques the romantic expectation that a partner should intuitively understand us. This, he argues, leads to disappointment and silent resentment. Instead, good relationships depend on explicit communication, tolerance, and a willingness to explain one’s needs.

Drawing on an older philosophical tradition, he suggests that love is inherently pedagogical—a process in which two people gently help each other grow into better versions of themselves.  

Ultimately, his message is quietly radical:

• There is no perfect partner waiting to be discovered.
• Every partner will be “wrong” in some ways.
• The success of love depends less on luck and more on psychological insight, generosity, and sustained effort.

Love, in this view, is not destiny—it is craftsmanship.

A CGM CONTINUOUS GLUCOSE MONITORING, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENE AND THE LIMITS OF CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING

 

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A CGM, Artificial Intelligence, and the Limits of Cultural Understanding

For the past week, I have been wearing a continuous glucose monitor, a device largely designed and marketed for the United States. During this time, I have been in France.

Two observations have become strikingly clear.

First, the artificial intelligence embedded within these systems—useful as it is—does not yet understand culture. It issued repeated warnings, almost alarmist in tone, predicting adverse glucose responses based on the foods I was consuming. Yet it has no capacity to distinguish where and how that food is prepared: whether industrially processed or carefully crafted within a French home or kitchen.

Not once did these predictions materialize.

( the above recording is over 12 hours ...lunch and dinner and you can see how consistent it is )

After one evening meal—champagne, a glass of Douro wine, a kosher croque monsieur (without ham), vegetable soup, steamed vegetables, and a slice of apple pie—my glucose levels remained remarkably stable. There was no meaningful excursion.

This is not an isolated observation, but a pattern.

It reinforces a broader lesson: foods that appear similar across countries are not metabolically equivalent. An apple pie in the United States is not the same as one in France. Regulatory standards, ingredient quality, and culinary traditions differ profoundly. In France, there is closer scrutiny of additives and chemicals, and a relative absence of highly processed foods in everyday life.

There is also an economic paradox. A well-prepared meal, often including wine, can be obtained here for significantly less than what one might pay in Miami—where industrialized food dominates much of the landscape.

One could argue that my observations reflect some peculiarity of absorption. But that explanation is difficult to sustain when the same individual, consuming comparable foods in different environments, demonstrates entirely different glycemic responses.

Bread is a simple example. In the United States, I approach it with caution. Here, fresh baguettes—made with few ingredients and traditional methods—do not produce the glycemic rise that the device confidently predicts.

Perhaps, in time, artificial intelligence will evolve to incorporate such nuances—cultural, agricultural, and culinary. For now, it remains reductionist, interpreting food as a set of macronutrients, rather than as a lived, contextual experience.

I have been eating with freedom, even generosity—and my glucose has remained stable.

There is a lesson here, not only for technology, but for how we understand food itself.