It almost seems I have to introduce myself again. Camping and building a dugout canoe was a great experience. Fun, learning and building up knowledge and skills.

School started and it was still the dry season so every chance I had I went to my camp. I went there on Friday afternoon and came back late Sunday afternoon.
In Surinam High School started at 7.30 am and finished at 12.30 pm.
I studied and made my homework in my camp.
There was plenty of time left to work on the canoe.
Before we left camp the last time me and my friends turned the log over so now I could start the real work, the digging out part.
I started to chop off the upper side of the log, leaving both ends intact so when finished it would look like a Canadian canoe (sort of).
I started chopping, making a flat surface between the two ends.
To be honest, I regretted the whole idea because it turned out to be a hell of a job.
After spending two weekends I was fed up with the whole project and told my friends that there would be no canoe.
So far it was a log with a flat surface which we could sit on.
One of my other friends came from a village in the jungle (as there were many. In time of slavery lots of slaves chose the jungle over being a slave and live a free but hard live far away
from the plantations and past the rapids and waterfalls. These people were called Maroons).
He knew how to build a canoe because in his village like all the other villages these people depended on these canoes.
He was willing to help, so the next Friday we went to my camp.
He brought along two cousins from his village who also lived nearby and were my friends too.
In our community we all knew each other and did many things together.
Friday we only had fun and did some swimming and went to sleep early.
For dinner we ate the food our parents made for us for the first day in camp.
For breakfast the next two days we had believe it or not, scrambled eggs and sausages and lots more goodies.
What these guys did in one Saturday and a half Sunday was amazing.
The final outer shape (only had to be smoothened) and what had to become the inner side of the canoe only had to be dug out further.
This was something I would be able to do alone over a pretty long period of time, but my friends promised me the next time they would help me again.
My friends did all the working on the canoe.
I went fishing and within the hour I had fish for dinner enough for 2 days.
This weekend I was more or less the assistant of my expert friends.
Of course it was not all working. We had a lot of fun in and around the camp and of course in the creek.
The coming weekend was a no for me because In had some exams comming up that week and had to study hard.
The next week however the four of us went back to camp.
The real chopping out the canoe began. This was not just rough chopping, but it needed expert skills so all I could do was assist and do the other things around camp and take care of the food part, fishing and cooking.
By Sunday afternoon the canoe was roughly finished and now it would be up to me to refine.
Refining was not hard to do, but it was very time consuming.

This is more or less how the canoe looked after my friends finished their work. Remember, this is a picture taken not then, but about 50 years later

By the end of November the canoe was almost finished and my 3 canoe building friends would visit me that Saturday.
They came around 10.30 am.
After unpacking and drinking some water we immediately started pushing the canoe into the creek.
At that moment we realized we had no paddles. There is on special tree in Surinam they call the peddle tree (translated directly from the Surinam language), and there are a lot of them.

Chopping off the necessary pieces of the flat part of the roots we had peddles within the hour.
We then peddled up the creek till we came across a tree that completely blocked our passage.
The other trees we could pass very easy because the trunks were more than 3 feet above the water or only a part was blocking the creek.
From camp to the tree blocking the creek was about 7 miles.
The canoe was roughly finished and just needed some minor trimming. We also had to fit some permanent seats made of the same non rotting Wana wood.
For these seats we made room to fit in both inner sides of the canoe.
This was the part we would do after the rainy season somewhere in February.
For now going to camp was over.
We pulled the canoe to shore and used smaller 10 inches thick and 60 inches long logs to roll the canoe further towards the camp away from the creek.
We also placed a lot of rocks in the canoe so it would not float and drift away if the water level raised that high.
Camping 1965 for now was over.