Haiti: voodoo leaders prepare temples for Covid-19 sufferers
Haiti’s voodoo leaders have trained priests of the Afro Caribbean religion to concoct a secret remedy for the novel virus and to prepare the sacred initiation chambers of their temples to receive patients.
In Haiti, where Western healthcare services are scarce and too expensive for the majority of the population, inhabitants often rely on the herbal remedies and ritual practices of their voodoo “houngan” priest or “mambo” priestess.
Draped in necklaces of colourful beads, Haitian Voodoo “Ati” or supreme leader Carl Henri Desmornes declared in an interview at his “gingerbread house” in Port-au-Prince he knew there would be a deluge of patients at their temples.
While Coronavirus took root slowly in the poorest country in the Americas, in the last two weeks the number of confirmed cases has nearly quintupled to 865 officially reported cases, while reports of a mysterious “fever” are spreading.
“Voodoo practitioners - the Houngans and Mambos in particular - have the responsibility to look after the wellbeing of the population,” said Desmornes, 60, who was a music promoter before becoming the Ati. “They have received the powers and the knowledge to put in place.”
More than half of Haiti’s 11 million people are believed to practice voodoo, a religion brought from West Africa centuries ago by enslaved men and women and practised clandestinely under French colonial rule.
Since the first cases of coronavirus were confirmed in Haiti around mid-March, Voodoo priests have been serving up teas with ingredients including moringa, eucalyptus, ginger and honey to strengthen the immune system.
“We live in a state where the health system is not able to respond to the challenge of the pandemic, so we have to rely on natural remedies,” said Mambo Lamercie Charles as she ladled out a potion. “I consider my temple as a clinic”.
Voodoo deputy leader Euvonie Georges Auguste said that inspired by the “Loas” (spirits), he has also come up with a potion for COVID-19 symptoms that they had taught priests virtually to prepare and administer.
The community had identified 1,000 voodoo temples that had a “Djèvo” - a sacred chamber used for initiation rituals - that was separate to the worship chambers and could be used to isolate up to 15 patients each, she affirmed.
Auguste said it was a shame President Jovenel Moise had highlighted Madagascar’s self-proclaimed, plant-based “cure” for COVID-19 rather than Haitian voodoo treatments.
“This attitude shows he is one of the victims of the system that still bears the scars of slavery,” she said.
Voodoo is closely identified with Haiti’s struggle for independence but has worked hard for reaching its legitimacy. It only won recognition as an official religion in 2003 under President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
Haiti’s voodoo practitioners in the past have frequently criticized Moise for appealing publicly to Christianity’s god rather than to Voodoo’s spirits.
Usually distorted in Hollywood and pulp fiction as a black magic cult, it suffers from stigma. Some evangelical preachers blamed that the 2010 earthquake on voodoo while mobs lynched at least 45 houngans and mambos they blamed for bringing about the subsequent cholera outbreak with their spells.
Voodoo priests have appeared on television and radio shows to make clear they are not responsible for coronavirus and that they are ready to fight it.
Still, Desmornes said the pandemic carried a message for the world - one difference between voodoo and Western medicine is that it seeks meaning in illness. Perhaps it was a warning sign, Desmornes mentioned, a sign that humans were like a virus to other beings on earth.
“I hope that after the virus...instead of transforming all nature, we look instead to live in harmony with it,” he concluded.
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