Acai tastes earthy and not unlike blueberries, but the exotic dark purple fruit contains three times more antioxidants than a blueberry. Found in the Amazon rainforest in South America, the fruit is best known in its powdered form, sprinkled in acai bowls for breakfast or added to smoothies. Wendell Paulus grew up eating acai (pronounced ah-sigh-ee) in pulp form, along with other Amazonian superfoods – such as graviola, caja, cupuacu and acerola – that today’s health-conscious consumers may be less familiar with than his tribe in the forests of Suriname, a small country on the northeastern coast of South America. Paulus, 37, has travelled far from his native village and now lives in the Asian metropolis of Hong Kong. He imports the exotic superfoods for sale in the city and neighbouring Macau, helping to support his village back home. His life could have turned out very differently, however. Before entering the health food business, Paulus was on the road to a promising career in mining and exploration, until he made a 180-degree turn to focus instead on sustainability. “As kids playing, we mainly went to the river, swimming, fishing and playing football. I also helped my grandfather with the crops in the plantation. It was really fun,” he recalls with a smile. Paulus and his older brother were born in Paramaribo, the capital of Suriname, but after his parents split up when he was a baby, his mother took the children to live with her community, the Maroon Saamaka, in the Amazon rainforest. “Life in the tribe is – there are no cars. It’s really, really far from anywhere. To go from the capital to the villages, you have to go by car and then go by boat up the Suriname River and past waterfalls,” Paulus explains, adding that there are those who hardly ever venture into the city. Suriname is home to many communities, including indigenous Amerindian Surinamese, and Maroons who are descended from African plantation workers taken to the country by Dutch colonists, all of whom live sustainable lifestyles, Paulus says. “The way we live is, we grow whatever we eat, not grow crops to sell,” he says. “You grow, and then next year you grow again. In one plantation you grow everything from bananas, rice, vegetables … just enough for you and your family. Even if you go fishing and hunting, it’s the same thing – you get just enough for you and your family, and the next day you go again. So that’s basically the lifestyle. You don’t harvest or hunt or fish more than you consume.” Most communities don’t have a stable source of electricity, he adds. Some may have a generator, but it will be turned off in the evenings to save energy. Life was not all idyllic in the forest. Paulus recalls violent clashes between guerilla factions of two groups and the Surinamese army between 1986 and 1990, sparked by land disputes. As a result, there was no formal education for local children for almost 10 years, and Paulus did not attend school until he was eight. He had a knack for linguistics, however, and can now speak eight languages, including English, Dutch, Surinamese, Aukan – a local language – and Mandarin. As he grew up, Paulus realised the importance of education and put a great deal of effort into his studies. “A lot of people moved from the village to the city to get a job, but to be really accepted in the city and to get ahead you need education,” he says. When he was 14, Paulus left the village to attend high school in the city, and later managed to earn a university scholarship. He studied geology and mining, while gaining work experience at an oil company. He earned enough to pay his living expenses and rented a room in a boarding house. For extra cash, he also worked as a gardener, in a textiles shop and as a hotel bellboy. He even worked the overnight shift at a petrol station before heading to class. The tribal people often have challenges from the outside: [people] cutting down trees, gold mine companies, chemicals. You constantly have threats from [the] outside [world] Wendell Paulus He would later be employed by another oil company, exploring for crude by using environmental studies, mapping and data analysis. The job was a path to a successful and steady future, but instead Paulus decided to pursue a second degree, in geophysics, on a scholarship in the Chinese city of Wuhan. “I always wanted to travel abroad,” he says. “I arrived in Wuhan in August 2007 and the only word I knew was ni hao .” He had to learn how to read, write and speak university-level Mandarin within a year before taking geophysics classes – in Mandarin. “I was the only foreigner in the class. There were 30 students and only a few knew English,” he says. After he graduated in 2011, Paulus enrolled in a master’s degree programme in petroleum engineering at Beijing’s China University of Petroleum. That is where he met his Italian girlfriend, now wife, Roberta Boffo, who was studying business and marketing at Capital Normal University, and at the end of 2013 he took her to Suriname to meet his family. The couple then decided to set up a consulting company to connect small businesses in South America with Chinese companies, and they later moved from Beijing to Shenzhen. Paulus was offered a job by an oil company back in Suriname, but by that point, his position on the environment had already changed dramatically. When growing up in the forest, he says, everything was “naturally” organic. But living outside Suriname, particularly in China, he realised that the food he was eating every day was often tainted with hormones and chemical fertilisers, so consumers were forced to pay a lot of money for specialist foods to lead healthy lives. So in 2017, Paulus and Boffo founded Asopie in Hong Kong, named after the maternal grandfather who helped raise him and who was one of the tribal elders. The company offers five superfood fruits that are grown and harvested sustainably in the Amazon. To keep them as authentic as possible, the fruits are pulped and then frozen before being transported to Hong Kong and sold for HK$80 (US$10.30) for a 400g reusable tub. They are gluten-free, dairy-free and completely organic. As well as providing healthier food, Paulus had wanted to help his community back in the rainforest. “The tribal people often have challenges from the outside: [people] cutting down trees, gold mine companies, chemicals. You constantly have threats from [the] outside [world],” he says. “We take what tribal people know and what tribal people are good at, which is agriculture. It won’t hurt the planet and won’t hurt the people, and it’s healthy, so we connect it with the world we live in, here in Hong Kong, and the environment here.” Asopie began selling acai pulp in Hong Kong and Macau, and last year added four more types of fruit from the Amazon. Graviola is another name for soursop, which is creamy and slightly sweet; caja smells and tastes like a combination of mango and passion fruit, and is rich in vitamins A, B and C; cupuacu, Paulus says, tastes like a blend of pineapple and banana, has an alcohol-like smell, and although it’s caffeine-free can keep people awake; and acerola also has a strong taste and smell, and a high dose of vitamin C. Hong Kong protest-inspired ‘tear gas’ ice cream that packs a punch Boffo, who is also an accomplished artist, says the fruit pulp can be used in acai bowls and smoothies, but also in salad dressings. It can be eaten as refreshing sorbets, or mixed with dates to sweeten it. Since the coronavirus pandemic broke out, Asopie has seen an increase in sales of its fruit pulps, acai in particular, with more clients wanting to eat in a healthier way. Paulus hopes it is a trend that will continue to help his people half a world away.