V-O-D-O-U-N
Poukisa n'ekri'l konsa
Why we spell it this way
| VODU, VODOU, VAUDOU, VAUDOUX, however
you spell it. The french pronunciation is vo-du. Moreau de Saint-Méry, french slave-owner
in the eighteenth century, is one of the first to have used it, and the trend never
stopped: the written media had found a catchy name to describe what the negroes of
Saint-Domingue did. The succesful slave revolt of 1804 that created Haiti brought away the
white planters and hundreds of their slaves -treated like cattle - to the land of the
"free", the United States, and in particular to New-Orleans. Need I say more?
Unlike cattle, my distant cousins carried with them the seeds of what became voodoo and
hoodoo in the States. But whereas these descendants of the Saint-Domingue slaves adopted
that name with pride, in Haiti, this word has never meant anything to the masses. It
remains a word used by the white man (or the westernized intelligentsia of Haiti) to
reduce a culture to a supertitious hodge-podge. It carries prejudice, suspicion of moral
turpitude. It reeks of intolerance. |
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I am aware that people in Benin proudly
practice a religion that they call Vodou, but this african origin only adds to the
confusion regarding haitian "vodou". There is no such thing as vodou in Haiti,
or rather no authentic organisation bears that name. Incidentally such a word does exist
in the traditional lexicon, but it does not begin to describe our culture no more than the
word "mustard" taken out of context could represent an imaginary american
"religion". |
| So this word means nothing to us, worse
yet, it pretends to describe a "religion", a very dangerous proposition as
witnessed by the senseless murders of innocent practitionners by extremist catholic
organizations. If by religion you mean a church, with a creed, a dogma, a hierarchy of
priests, with one religious leader, you will find none of that. No more will you find
devil-worship, snake-worship, tree-worship or human sacrifices. Of course you will find
one or two ritual murderers a century, or if you are a tourist, some hoodlum that will
worship your dollars and recreate your fantasy. |
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Instead you will find a loosely wound
yarn of family traditions, some better kept in old sacred grounds tended by the same
family since colonial times. Of course they all share ancestor worship, and one step
beyond, spirit worship. Spirits, which is what we become when we fade away in the
firmament of our descendants memory. Did King Arthur really tread England's green hills
once, or does it matter. Was ever Ogou a real, breathing warrior? Or does it really
matter? Of course there are precise rituals that are attached to these beliefs. They don't
make up a religion. Instead, these are the foundations of a real culture that is shared by
all haitians. For we believe that in Haiti, the african born slaves voluntarily smoothed
their differences (in one or more mythical Bwa Kayiman ceremonies) in order to fight the
common enemy. To this day, an opening litany to "vodou" ceremonies salutes all
other rites from other "nations". The key to peaceful co-existence in this new
land. |
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Still, there is more in common between
episcopalians and catholics than there are between a practioner in Soukri, near Gonaives
(city of the Artibonite river plain) and Kanzo/Ginen in Port-au-Prince. |
| We then were caught in this awful
dilemna : under what name can we describe the beauty and harmony fostered by our
traditions in all its diversity without falling in the trap. Using the same artificial
word would seem to condone the confusion that has gone on before. On the other hand, since
our purpose is to communicate we needed a clear way to indicate what we are talking about.
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The evident solution is to talk of
"Culture", but we needed to go beyond that. To talk of Haitian Culture would
unfairly brush aside our occidentalized brothers and sisters, arguably no less haitian.
"Vodou" crept up logically, plainly having gained visibility, but this time we
turned to the speakers themselves. We hear "Vodoun" with a nasal, velar
pronunciation of the final syllable the few times the word comes in the rituals. So its
more like VO-D'n. We hoped this difference would elicit your curiosity. |
| Hence our choice : VODOUN CULTURE. |
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