Author: andezo

An older version of the website surfaced long enough for me to grab the articles off from it and export them to this blog. Now you can read what I had to say about U.S. aid to Haiti after the 12 January 2010 earthquake, and various shenanigans that kept it from getting to its destination, as well as some small snippets of news. Enjoy!

In the meantime, I’ve just returned from the PantheaCon religious conference, where I offered a demonstration of part of a Vodou ceremony for the Lwa Danbala, and where I was asked to speak on Coru Cathubodua‘s excellent panel concerning sacrifice. There’s already been some conversation about this panel around the Internet, and I expect there may be more as more people get home and start getting their thoughts together. I have a few more things to say, too, but first I could use some sleep.

It started with a text.

Hey there was just a bad earthquake in Haiti, is Mami Marie OK?

I was in the car that afternoon, waiting for my downstairs neighbor to come out of the appointment I’d driven her to. One of my initiate daughters, ti-Marie, pinged me with the text. Immediately I phoned my Vodou mother, Mambo Marie; I knew that she had returned from her trip to see the family in Port-au-Prince only a few hours before. I managed to catch her.

“I’ll call,” she said. “I’ll call you back.”

I turned on the car, and the radio news.

None of the news was good. A massive, shallow earthquake had hit near Leogane, right before dinnertime. The only thing the reporters seemed to know was that the airport was “damaged” and that there were reports that the cathedral – and the palace – The Palace? – had fallen down.

That was when the panic set in. The family lakou is in a neighborhood very close to the Palace. And if that big, fancy,  well-built thing had fallen down…

My neighbor came out of the building. I drove home, went upstairs to the apartment I had two floors above hers, grabbed both my phones, and started making calls.

Two days ago, I talked to my Mami (she may be Mambo Marie Carmel to everybody else, but she’ll always be Mami to me), and I asked about how everyone in Haiti was. “Oh they’re fine, but they’re waiting for me for the soup,” she said with a laugh.

Two hundred and ten years ago, everybody was waiting for the soup in Haiti, because soup, at least this soup, is a big deal. It’s called soup joumou, or “winter pumpkin soup,” and it’s the best Haitian soup ever for more than culinary reasons. I give a recipe for soup joumou in my book, Haitian Vodou, but I didn’t have the space to explain why it’s a “lucky soup,” or what the big deal about soup is.

Haiti became an independent nation on January 1, 1804, after almost thirteen unspeakably brutal years of revolution and war. Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the successor to Haiti’s liberating general Toussaint L’Ouverture, declared the colony of Saint-Domingue defunct, and renamed the island Ayiti (Haiti in French) after its original Arawak (Taino indigenous language) name.

There are any number of legends about that time. One of them states that soup joumou became a symbol of independence (as well as New Year’s Day) because the French slave owners had forbidden slaves to eat it, and so they shared it with each other as an act of freedom. Is it true? No one really knows anymore, but we do know that as long as people can remember New Years Day/Haitian Independence Day in Haiti, they can remember the soup.

I’ve been trying to make my Internet life a little easier. Not having three different blogs to keep track of is a significant part of that. Sure, there’ll be more things than just Vodou things to read about on the new blog… however, then it gives you all more to be interested in – or you can just skip the things that don’t interest you.

From now on, you can catch this blog at tamarasiuda.com. Hope to see you there!

I haven’t forgotten about you! It’s Lent, and closer and closer to Holy Week, that time of year when our Lwa go anba dlo and rest and prepare for the rest of the year. This evening I covered up all our altars in the badji so that they can be rejuvenated over the holy time. We’ll be having a huge party on Miracle Saturday (Easter Saturday) going into Easter Sunday – as the Resurrection occurs in the Catholic faith, so too do the spirits return to the world and make it new. Ayibobo! You’ll see lots more on this and the rest of the imamou.org page after Lent’s over.