Haitian Voodoo Quotes

Risk discomfort and solitude for understanding.

In the West we cling to the past like limpets. In Haiti the present is the axis of all life. As in Africa, past and future are but distant measures of the present, and memories are as meaningless as promises.

Only, in Haiti, I realized, is it possible to drink rum and haggle with a god.

She had a hundred precocious ideas, and some were good and true, but they could never be hers until she found them alone, for ideas are but words unless they are sown in experience.

It was amusing to look at that colorful case so symbolic of an entire nation. Haiti, it is said, is the place to discover how much can be done with little.

Les loas sont les dieux des nègres d’Afrique. Dieu est universel. Les loas se vengent de la désertion des nègres car ils ont été esclaves et persécutés et que le vaudou sera, un jour, leur point de ralliement

For example, the Cha Cha—that's straight out of Haitian and Cuban voodooism, chacha being the name of a rattle used in voodoo ceremonies. Or mambo—the voodoo word for a priestess of the supernatural religion.

Mais le Père Angelo se refusa tout net à serrer la main au prêtre du vaudou

No place in Haiti was easy to get to and to drive to their lodge would take a couple of hours, so they sent a van to pick us up. It was already evening and the sun had just set, as we made our way up into the mountains behind Port-au-Prince. As we bounced along the dirt road winding through the hills, I could distinctly hear the rhythm of drums and see fires on the distant mountains. Mrs. Allen, who was with us, explained that in the 1940’s devout members of the Catholic faith considered the Voodoo rites an abomination of their faith. They armed themselves and started to eradicate from Haiti what they considered a cult. The entire thing turned into a war! They burned voodoo temples and shrines, and killed some of the practitioners as well as voodoo priests. In the end, the Catholic hierarchy gave up and after a time reached a tacit understanding with them. They now allowed Voodoo drums and songs to be sung in Catholic Church services and ignored what they once called devil worship. At the lodge, we were assigned rooms with real beds instead of the cots we were used to on the ship. Dinner consisted of chicken in a hot tomato and garlic sauce, over rice, with a heap of picklese on the side. Picklese is a pickled dish or Vinaigre Piquant, indigenous to Haiti consisting of peppers, shredded cabbage, onions, carrots, peas, vinegar, peppercorns and cloves. The dessert was Haitian Flan. It could not have been better and I was glad that I had availed myself of this generous offer. After dinner we went outside to where there was a large fire roaring, surrounded by benches made of split logs. We were warned that it gets cool in these mountains, and I was glad that I had brought along a sweater and jacket. We seated ourselves on the logs around the fire and listened to a gaunt-looking old Haitian woman explain what Voodoo was. She sounded convincing as she told of the Grand Voodoo Zombie rituals that were held at “Wishing Spot,” and how snakes slithered about the feet of the young women dancers. She spoke reverently about the walking dead in the Lower Artibonite Valley and the Spirits trapped in bottles near Cape Haitian. It was all very spooky and gave me something to think about that night. However before her talk ended, she came directly up to me and, looking deep into my eyes, said that I was to beware…. “I would witness death before leaving the island….” Ouch!