Upriver in Time

After a year spent earning as a gardener, Badé Adamé leaves Pararmaribo, the capital of Suriname, to return home to Kayana, 200 miles upriver. The journey will be long, grueling and dangerous.
Adamé is Saramaka. The Saramakas are the descendants of the first African slaves to rise up or to "maroon". Oppressed by the most barbarous cruelty, these slaves formed gangs as of 1686 to rampage the plantations they were toiling on. After a 75-year guerrilla war, the Saramakas won their freedom. Though marooning sprung up all over the Caribbean, only in Suriname were Maroons able to create nations, which are still officially ruled by kings, captains and vice-captains, known as 'basjas'. Adamé proudly returns to his village as a 'basja'.
In their flight into the depths of the Amazonian jungle, the Saramakas mixed the creeds and rituals of their African homelands with a mystical veneration of the forest. They also have made the history of their flight, the "Fesi Ten", or the "First Times", sacred. Two villages are still off-limits to Whites. Adamé contends that peace has yet to be made fully because the spirits or "wintis" have not forgotten the days of slavery.
Nonetheless, Western thought has been trickling it's way into the isolation of the Saramaka Kingdom. A certain "Mister Food" is the representative in Kayana of the American splinter Church of the Living God. He is a rationalist. He reminds us that it is not with "wintis" that you can fly planes or make cameras. He owns a store and the only telecommunications device with the outside, a two-way radio. He is the richest man in town.
Can the Saramakas, who have maintained their identity thanks to their isolation, deal with the tug of modernity and the risk of cultural disintegration?