The missionaries

Catching up a little bit...I'll fill in some of the highlights of the last three months. One of them was during the motorcycle trip with my dad and John Mills. I'll get photos up here soon. But let me tell you what happened on our first stop. Halfway between MCC's reforestation office and the city of Mirebalais is a beautiful waterfall called Saut d'eau, or Sodo in Creole. It's also a sacred Vodou site. Here's a post about the first time I went there. So my dad and John and I are riding up this very steep, rough road to get to the falls and we passed a bunch of pasty white folks. As we got off the motorcycles and walked down to the falls we were talking about this group and wondering who they might be.

"Missionaries," my dad said.

"Really? Are you sure?"

"Oh yeah. You can just tell."

So, we got down to our skivvies and climbed up the rocks to get behind the falls. It was gorgeous, as always. I pointed out the half-full bottles of rum and candles and other little effects that had been left there as offerings. Nobody really knows what to expect from a Vodou holy site, and my dad and John were just taking it all in.

I looked down below and the white people started filing in and staking out an area near one of the lower falls. I noticed that one of them had a good number of tattoos, which is when I started to doubt my dad's theory. Then they circled up and held hands and appeared to be singing. I thought, maybe dad's right. But the sound of the falls was so loud I couldn't tell if it was kumbayah or what.

When we decided to hit the road, we went back down to where our clothes were. There I found a woman I know who is a travel agent for groups coming to Haiti. I asked her who these mysterious white people were. She informed me that it was a group of Vodouisants from Philadelphia who were here to be initiated as priests (houngan) and priestesses (mambo). That's right, white Vodou people. I've known for a while that there is a lot of academic interest in Vodou, and even the rare white person who will participate in ceremonies and undergo possession. I was not, however, aware that there were enough non-Haitians practicing Vodou in the whole United States, let alone Philly, to justify a group initiation of about 10 new houngans and mambos. I suppose they could be going back to Philly to minister to Haitians living there, but I reeeeeeeeeally doubt it.

I love telling Haitians that story. Some aren't surprised at all, but most of them give a kind of laugh like "what are those crazy white people going to do next?"