Sopropo and gomawiri, just from Almere

Planters with petunias, begonias, hydrangeas and geraniums stand in front of the entrance to the greenhouse, which until recently was overgrown with reeds. They show how proud Guno Marengo (1960) is. It was a wasteland in the greenhouse. And now: “Look how my bitawiri looks.” Between the bitawiri, a bitter leafy vegetable, are peppers and amsoi, a kind of turnip greens. Marengo has made a fence at the back of the greenhouse that allows fresh air in while the greenhouse can remain locked. This is his greenhouse, his domain.

Marengo has the greenhouse on loan from Bob van der Voort of Biofood, grower of organic vegetables in Almere-Buitenvaart. “Bob was the second man in my life to listen to me and give me space.” First, Guno Marengo was allowed to fill the edges of his greenhouse with Surinamese vegetables. And then he entrusted him with the neglected treasury.

The first man to give Marengo “a voice” was his psychologist.

Before showing his vegetables, Marengo has made coffee and sat down on a chair in a small room near the Biofood greenhouses. It was a long road that brought him here. You don’t have to ask Guno Marengo anything, it will come naturally. How he started working at a car paint shop in Suriname as a seven-year-old and took on the father role at home. How he came to the Netherlands when he was nineteen with his father’s lessons in mind. He might have been absent from the family, but he had instilled in the young Guno: knowledge is power, always take care of yourself.

Guno Marengo became a road worker in the Netherlands, did evening mts, became a police officer. “The first immigrant police officer in Almere,” he says. When he switched to the environmental department in Amsterdam after ten years, he fell into a depression during his training. He doesn’t say much about why. What he does say: “I am a believer, I believe that everything has a purpose. Amen!” He is still grateful that, despite his failure, he was able to stay. He did the work for years.

Tears of joy

From 2012, it gradually went downhill. A hernia, type 2 diabetes, a new depression. And two years later the death of his father. “I finally went on my mouth.” Guno Marengo, the man who had walked in open and fearless everywhere for 27 years as an environmental inspector, locked himself in his house, with his musical instruments. “Agoraphobia.” Only a lady from the care group managed to get him out the door now and then.

Guno Marengo talks and talks. And then there’s a lot under the surface that he doesn’t tell. Occasionally he cries. “That I tear is processing. I’ve processed it. I can now shed tears of joy.”

He regained his strength, he says, “through my prayer, my faith.” And through his garden. He previously had a house on an allotment complex in Almere Haven, three hundred square meters of ornamental garden. But his dream really came to life at Onze Volkstuinen in de Kas, a greenhouse where hobby gardeners grow their own vegetables, a little further down the road where Bob van der Voort and his company are also located.

Marengo started with ten square meters. Pepper plant, tajer leaf, antroewa. After three months, he wanted more. Thirty, fifty, one hundred square meters. Sopropo, clarion, long beans, but also string beans and tomatoes. He had something to get out of the house for. Sow, water, weed and harvest.

At first he planted the vegetables for himself, more and more people came to buy something from him or who let themselves be inspired by Marengo to start gardening as well. It must have always been there, he says. His grandmother had agricultural land in Suriname, a piece of land where he often visited. As an inspector he often and liked to visit greenhouses. “The dream was there, but it had gone down.”

Also read: ‘Did you think we always eat Surinamese?’

He wasn’t supposed to sell anything, but Marengo was always amazed: why do we import all those Surinamese vegetables? It is nostalgia, he thinks, that makes many people prefer to buy Surinamese vegetables from far away than to make the same dish with Dutch green beans or spinach. What comes out of the greenhouse can never taste like what grows under the Surinamese sun. In the meantime, there are only a few Dutch growers who try to prove otherwise. Unfamiliarity and unease, Marengo thinks. While there are 360,000 Surinamese Dutch people and there has been an import ban on, among other things, sopropo from Suriname for a few years.

Anyway. Eighteen months ago: Guno Marengo now had 130 square meters. “And then I ran into Bob, at Our Allotments. Bob van der Voort.” And he had three hundred square meters on offer: he didn’t use the sides of his greenhouse anyway, Marengo could put his Surinamese vegetables there. Biological. “That is intensive and you have fewer guarantees of a good yield. But I want to do it that way.” As an environmental inspector, he’s seen enough poison. “Nature is not subordinate to man.”

He walks through the greenhouses and shows how his Surinamese vegetables grow brotherly next to the long rows of cucumbers. Marengo installed the watering system itself. If the soil can use some nutrition, or if it needs parasitic wasps to fight aphids, it can use the resources and expertise of the people at Biofood. “Of course it also gives Bob something. He can thus, what is it called, corporate social responsibility. We help each other.”

Saxophone

Sixty meters long, two meters wide, along two sides of the greenhouse, all possible Surinamese vegetables. Boulanger (a type of aubergine), tajerblad. Weed that turns out not to be a weed but edible nightshade (gomawiri). Long beans (long beans) and lots of sopropo.

Marengo holds two young sopropo fruits between his fingers and looks at the flower: one is female, the other male. “I can be happy with a seed that germinates or a flower that has a bee on it.” The knobby cucumber-like fruit becomes sweeter the longer it ripens, but it is the bitterness that gives flavor to many Surinamese dishes. Braised, fried, stuffed with meat or fish, or pickled in acid. And then sopropo would also help against type 2 diabetes.

Whether it’s the medicinal powers of Surinamese vegetables, or the simple fact that he can put his mind to it in the greenhouse, with his hands in the soil: Guno Marengo no longer needs his psychologist and has stopped taking his diabetes medicines. He once dreamed of growing organic Surinamese vegetables and selling them for an affordable price. Now that he has become acquainted with the therapeutic effect of working as a horticulturist and occasionally gives guided tours, he wants more: “Guiding people with psychological problems in the greenhouse.”

When Guno Marengo has a bad day, he gets up, thanks God and asks for strength. And then he goes to the cashier. Sometimes he takes his saxophone with him. He sits down among the cucumbers and blows his thoughts away. “Here I am a happy man.”