Religion & Culture | African Vodun - power, glory and resistance

I remember sitting for hours on end listening to my mentor, Dr Henry Frank. Dr Frank was an anthropologist and historian, a jewel in the Haitian community in New York. He conveyed his knowledge of Vodun and its misrepresentation by sensationalists and simpletons.

I probed, trying to find answers regarding the desperation of Haiti despite the supposed wonderment of that practice. I never forgot his response: “If it weren’t for Vodun, Haiti would have been broken beyond repair.”

Dr Henry spoke about the invincibility of the Haitian rebels who wrestled independence from the French. He pointed to the writings of Marshal Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau, commander-in-chief of the French expeditionary forces who attested to the magic of the resistance. The black freedom fighters seemed impervious to the firepower unleashed by the French.

We spoke about Boukman and Makandal who started it all.

Years later, the late Christian preacher, Pat Robertson, described Vodun as satanic, and I wondered if he considered the enslavement of blacks a virtue. Astonishingly, the black clergy never challenged Robertson’s broadside against Africa.

I thought long and hard about his indictment of Vodun, all part of propaganda that began centuries ago when the first missionaries landed in Africa. Fake news is not a new phenomenon. The first Christians on the black continent mastered it.

They were on the front line, weaving webs of deception, preaching one thing and doing another. It was never about love, but deceit and treachery.

The missionaries were closely followed by the merchants and the military, all part of a master plan. Indisputably, the Christians were the leaders of every conquest. The slave museum in Ouidah, Benin, tells this sordid tale. The propaganda machine called Christianity was well oiled: Let’s paint the religion of Africans as evil, violent and barbaric, and ours as pure and holy. This is classical psychology. Christian missionaries projected their own barbarity on conquered peoples. Repeat a lie for centuries and it becomes a truth. You start believing your own lie. Yes, the missionaries were men of war and their religion was never one of peace. The ‘Good’ Book proves just that. Indeed, salvation through deicide is the most repulsive act imaginable, and slavery sanctioned in ‘holy’ scriptures is not far behind. We were hoodwinked into turning our backs to the one faith that could protect us from the wiles of the missionaries and their associates. That explains the concentrated effort to sully Voodoo, to make it an anathema in the eyes of those to whom it belongs. We were given a Christianity that the missionaries never believed in. If they did, they would never have connived with the merchants and the military.

They gave us the religion of forgiveness, an opiate, a turn-the-other-cheek product that has contributed to our malaise and stagnation as a people. They peddled 1 Peter 2:18, and we fell for it. But theirs was a Christianity of domination and violence sanctioned by their demiurge.

So while the gullible waited for their divine meed, riches were stolen from beneath them.

EYE For AN EYE

But not everyone was bedazzled by their sleight of hand. The Haitian revolutionaries and the Maroons didn’t, nor did the iconic Harriett Tubman, the firebrand conjurer Gullah Jack of South Carolina, nor Dinkie the Conjure Doctor of Missouri. In all of these cases, the Christians met their match – an eye for an eye. African Vodun stood its ground.

And while I was in Grand Popo, Benin, Dr Frank’s words rang true:

African Vodun protected the true believers from the evil that Christianity visited on the land. And it is there that I recounted Vodun practitioners in Trinidad telling the young leaders of the historic 1970 Black Power Revolution to seek their protection, but they were naive and never heeded their advice. And the once-promising uprising suddenly fell on its face as if it never happened. And here I was in Grand Popo, where the ancestors of my teacher Joseph Adokpo sought refuge from Portuguese kidnappers in the town of Ouidah. Adokpo’s great-grandfather was captured and sold into slavery.

Providence favoured others. This war continued unabated, decades after the British colonies were emancipated. The lusting over slaves in Brazil lasted till 1888. Benin satisfied their cravings.

It was in Grand Popo’s sacred forest that the Adokpo clan and others regrouped, calling on their gods in the dead of night, with offerings of sacrificial blood as they danced to the sounds of drums. And their gods answered, making their children immune to danger, free from the clutches of the Christians and their Saviour, just as they did for Boukman and their faithful servants.

Weeks ago, I was taught and initiated in that very forest and I saw the relics of those pitch battles. African Vodun works. Dr Frank said so. And more than ever I believed him, for in the sacred forest of Grand Popo, I felt its power, its glory and its resistance.

- Dr Glenville Ashby is the award-winning author of the audiobook, Anam Cara: Your Soul Friend and Bridge to Enlightenment and Creativity. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and glenvilleashby@gmail.com, or tweet @glenvilleashby.