Some people enter a new job blindly, some a relationship.
I dove into a Continent backwards and with crossed fingers, having progressed far enough in my admittedly procrastinated background research on Suriname before my departure to hear something about a Native Uprising in the small nation of 377,000 north of Brazil. It was one which would have put to shame, present company included, I must admit, if in law enforcement rather than the travel business, the Keystone Cops. Even one of our guides, a member of Suriname's Ministry of Tourism, had given me what I considered cause to watch him carefully, ever since those disconcerting moments in the shuttle van the previous evening at the airport when he had to surreptitiously siphon gasoline, orally and despite his three piece suit, from a neighboring Daihatsu, for which he apologized in Dutch when he saw me glancing out the window at him with a Puzzled Victorian expression on my face. He explained something about Suriname's weak and constantly devalued currency that was contributing to a tragic and atypical fuel shortage. I was immediately grateful for the upturned and clearly not-belligerent expressions on the faces of some of the younger members of our welcoming committee at the airstrip, since I was unarmed, and not one of them, it was clear, spoke Surinamese, nor, need I add, English.