A beautiful blend of cultures

 Ruben Gilles

The reason my Surinamese family ended up in Amsterdam was because my grandfather was hired by an organisation that wanted to strengthen the ties between different cultures in Suriname. He was originally from the capital of Suriname, Paramaribo, where my dad was born. My grandfather set up a cultural centre there, where he worked as art director for over 20 years. My dad was a bass player and eventually met my Dutch uncles, who were also musicians living in the same town.

They started a band together called The Ghost Riders, which was also later joined by my mum, who was from The Hague. That’s how my parents met and fell in love. Despite The Ghost Riders being hugely popular, as our family grew, my parents realised it was time to leave Suriname, which was a third-world country at the time. They moved the whole family back to Holland in 1970, before I’d even turned one, and that’s where we remained for the duration of my childhood.

When I was 23, I moved to Paris and met some crazy Aussies there. They told me to come down to Melbourne so I thought, Yep, why not? much to my mum’s horror. So in 1995 I moved to Melbourne where I’ve been ever since. In many ways, it’s weird that I’ve ended up here, because while there are many cultures that tend to pop up around the world, Surinamese are probably some of the last people you would expect to see around this end of town.

In Holland, there is still a huge population of Surinamese people. Our appearance is usually a mix between Creole and Dutch, and the food is a blend of Hindi and Dutch, and all sorts of other wonderful cuisines. Holland is very diverse—even the French have their stamp down there.

When I came to Australia, there were a lot of unusual looks from people who hadn’t seen anyone that looked quite like me before—I guess [being mixed-race] was less common. But, lucky for me, I found the culture very relatable. It felt very compatible with Dutch culture. Australians, like the Dutch, are very forward, jovial and well-travelled, so I fit into that part of it well.

The funny thing about being Dutch and Surinamese, despite that ethnically we look different, is that there’s actually not a lot of difference between the foods and customs and family culture. My mum, who lives here now, cooks a lot. And even though she is my white parent, she cooks lots of delicious Surinamese dishes, like fried rice and string beans, and uses traditional herbs like bay leaves. Our culture is very much a beautiful blend of interesting cuisines and languages. And I think that’s pretty cool.