The following day we drove down to the coastal town of Jacmel to witness their Gede celebrations. Linda explained that we wouldn’t have to worry so much about security considerations, which would allow us more opportunity to objectively observe the proceedings. I gathered that she hadn’t enjoyed the experience of the previous day either.
The genteel decay of the French colonial buildings of Jacmel was a refreshing change from the urban collapse of Port au Prince. There was still grinding poverty, but the beggars who accosted us in the cemetery were much more restrained than those of the day before.
That evening we witnessed two Gede ceremonies that could hardly have been more different. The first was presided over by an enormous white woman called Carol. She stood all of six feet three inches in her stockinged feet and must have weighed sixteen stones at least. She was fat in places, but the overall impression was one of a strapping, great woman. Similar to some of the ex-pats who frequented the Oloffson, she seemed to have several young Haitian males in attendance.
Carol was an American with a Masters degree from the University of Massachusetts, and it showed. The carefully choreographed ceremony, held in a roofed temple with no walls, owed more to show business than to spirituality. Lounging about in her street clothes as she articulated the cult of voudou with considerable clarity, Carol sounded believable. Done up in her priestesses’ outfit of flowing blue robe, blue turban, sporting a pink silk scarf, and wielding a massive machete that must have been a yard long, she looked quite ridiculous.
Carol, supposedly a fully initiated priestess herself, advertises voudou holidays on the internet. During some of these holidays she initiates would be voudouists into the priesthood. At the height of the ceremony, which consisted mostly of Carol thundering about the earthen floor wielding the machete with both hands, she pointed out Dave, a short, fat, bearded, Jewish guy from Syracuse, whom she had personally initiated.
Voudou ‘priest’ Dave, in a Baron Samedi outfit he might easily have borrowed from a fancy dress shop, swayed gracelessly to the beat of the drums. Woody Allen would have made more of the role. Whatever. Us Jews are quite familiar with the role of the voudou ‘priest’, we call them rabbais. And Dave is only doing his bit for the cause. For with George W. Bush in the White House, what America desperately needs right now is more kosher witchdoctors!
Thus far, I hadn’t been at all impressed by the degree of spirituality of the ceremonies conducted by the voudou priesthood. Those carried out by both Silva and Carol seemed to be merely voudou for tourists. As far as spiritual experiences go, they had left me cold and unmoved. I could only hope that the ceremony later that evening would be different.
The initial proceedings hadn’t gone well. We had met with the priestess in a run down restaurant she owned in the slum quarter of the town. The bargaining over how much we should pay to witness the ceremony was drawn out and, at times, bitter. Clearly, she wanted to get as much as she could out of us. Again, this tended to detract from the supposed spirituality of the event.
We made our way through narrow, labrynthine alleys, in pitch blackness, as we went ever deeper into the heart of the slum. The thought did occur to me that, should we lose the priestess who was leading us, we would never find our way out again. That served to make us keep up. We arrived at the temple shortly before midnight.
As a place of worship, this temple was entirely more impressive than any we had previously seen. It was fully twice as big as the one Silva Joseph practiced in and was lit by hundreds of candles. If it was also dual use, we saw no evidence of it. The central pole was massive. Decorated with fantastical carvings and paintings, hundreds of strange, ritualistic objects hung all over it.
The ‘priest’s assistant was busy marking out the mystical drawings for Gede in corn-flour on the bare earth floor. At cardinal points he set lighted candles and bottles of rum. Several drummers sat in a group in a corner, while scores of celebrants in their street clothes thronged the margins of the temple. Some wore Christian crosses on chains around their necks.
I did feel that we were intruding, both as the only whites present and as outsiders. Quite clearly, we weren’t sincere practitioners, merely curious observers. We weren’t exactly welcomed, but there was no real hostility either. With Gary filming and Linda snapping away, I decided to make myself inconspicuous and settled down in a corner.
Suddenly, the voudou ‘priest’ appeared, clad all in purple. He seemed quite young, certainly no more than in his late twenties. He gave a signal and the drums began to beat. He was joined at the centre of the temple by the priestess, now clad all in white. A chorus of several other women, dressed in white flowing robes, circled them and the central post.
At first it was just call and response, initiated by the ‘priest’. Then, as the beat and the intensity increased, the singing and dancing began. At the margins, the congregation swayed rhythmically, occasionally calling out and joining in the singing.
I was trying to observe proceedings objectively. Un-diverted by the demands of participation, I was coolly appraising every event, however minor. I didn’t want to miss anything. Hopefully, my account would be a definitive one on the true nature of a voudou ceremony.
However, as much as I tried to remain objective and above the proceedings, slowly, inexorably, I felt myself being drawn in. The drumming was so loud now that it seemed to be inside my head. A myriad smells assailed my nostrils. The temple seemed to have grown several degrees hotter and I was sweating profusely. My very consciousness, previously casting about to take in every little thing, seemed to be focusing more and more on what the ‘priest’ and priestess were doing.
As the drumming reached fever pitch, the women of the chorus seemed to experience some kind of seizure. One after the other, it sent them reeling and stumbling across the temple. Just when you thought they were about to fall, they were caught and supported by the rest. According to voudou lore, they had been possessed by the spirits of Gede.
Then, after a quick swig of rum, they would break away, dancing wildly and spinning round and round in a fashion that would have made any ordinary person dizzy in seconds. The most amazing thing though was that, no matter how fast they spun, or how wildly they danced, often with their eyes closed, not once did their feet come close to knocking over one of the candles or bottles that had been placed on the mystical drawings. There was no rational explanation for this.
By now, the whole room and everyone in it was convulsing to the deafening beat of the drums. Whatever was happening (and I still haven’t really worked it out), I was caught up in it. I felt elated, enthused, excited and moved, all at the same time. I wouldn’t attempt to try to quantify the experience with words like ‘trance’ or ‘possession’, but I had certainly attained some kind of higher state, spiritual or otherwise.
I like being in control. My awesome self-discipline, built up over 24 years of incarceration, was designed to achieve just that end. So to be out of control, or rather, to be controlled by other forces, was completely alien to me. I experienced a brief feeling of panic. I had to get away.
I stumbled out into the night, disorientated and confused. Never have the shadows of a darkened street seemed so ominous. As I waited for the others I clearly remember hoping that whatever had touched me in the temple would find no foothold in me. I had come to Haiti to get rid of any spirits that might be troubling me, not to find one and take it home with me.
All mysticism aside, the Haiti assignment was a considerable success. ‘Front’ ran my story in their next issue, accompanied by a score or so of dramatic and exotic pictures. Central amongst the latter was one of me naked. Well not completely naked. It was shot from behind, from the waist up, with Silva’s altar in the background and the porcelain bowl just above my head. And there, on the byline for the photography, was Linda’s name.
It was a ticking bomb. Should Marsha ever discover the article, all the spirits of Gede wouldn’t be able to protect me from her wrath. Now that’s what I call living dangerously!