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rockofeye · 5 days ago

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Dry Bones Breath

I have been attempting to write this particular post for months. I have innumerable drafts full of emotion and wrought feelings and explaining, and none of them have ever felt right to post. Maybe two months ago, I gave myself permission not to write this. I felt like I was pushing too hard to birth something that had yet to be fully formed, and so I put it to the side and went on with life. I jotted notes when something bubbled up, and I otherwise didn't think about it or look at it. I stopped expecting myself to be able to produce something when the moment for that something had clearly not yet arrived.

In retrospect, I think I was waiting to feel right about it. I don't like to write angry, so I have waited not to be angry all the time. I have waited to not be tearful when writing about particular aspects. I have waited for my process of writing to be calm and not a frenzied pounding at my keyboard. I have waited to not feel like I was writing to appease others or in fear of others or what might be said about what I write. I have waited for the burden of not writing to feel heavy but not reactionary, in that I know I need to set this down for my own betterment but that the burden is not a bag of angry cats that I need to throw into the river to feel a little peace. This past week, I have finally felt like I have arrived in that place, so here we are.

On November 26, 2024, I submitted a letter resigning my membership in Sosyete Nago. As I have written extensively on my journey with and in Sosyete Nago, it feels important that I write about my exit, how and why I made that decision, and, to some extent, where I go from there. I have always been as transparent as I know how to be with my journey and process, and I feel that it would be dishonest not to be transparent here, too. I owe myself transparency and speaking the truth as I understand it and have experienced it, and I owe transparency to people who have held faith with me through this blog--co-religionists, siblings, friends, clients, seekers, curious folks, and more.

To be perfectly blunt, I really would love to be able to feel like I could just wash my hands of this and keep moving forward without getting into this incredibly painful process, but I can't. That feels like lying and also like tacit agreement with a whole of things that I really don't agree with. So, I write.

I was active in Sosyete Nago for eleven and a half years. I attended my first fet at Manbo Maude's house in Boston in November 2013 and completed my kanzo/initiation in July 2016 in Jacmel. The first time I missed a fet kay in the US was the fet Danbala that was only a few weeks after I gave birth and the last fet I attended was fet Kouzen this past spring. I was committed to being present and a part of the community because that was both something I was directly taught by my godfather, in that I had been given a lot of grace in the djevo and the appropriate response to that was to show up and put my hands in the work, and because I felt strongly that I didn't make all the sacrifices I did to get where I was to not be of use and to not learn anything. I spent literal years standing or sitting in a particular place in the temple in the US and the temple in Haiti, either actively helping the fets unfold or absorbing what was happening and allowing the lwa to speak to me through the drums and the salutations and my observations.

I didn't join Sosyete Nago with the intent to leave, at all. This was a topic at the ceremonies in Haiti leading to my kanzo; more than one spirit asked me if I was going to take what I would learn and what I would be given and leave. When I said no, I meant it. I went to Haiti to do the work that I desperately needed and that I had promised to do, with no other agenda. I told myself that if I hated it, I didn't have to go back but I never had any plans of walking away. That was a big deal for me, because I am not a joiner. I do not find it easy to trust people and I certainly did not want to forge any lasting ties with any person or community. The lwa had other plans, though, and so I jumped in with both feet and trusted that they would keep me whole.

Over the years, I learned a lot about developing as a spiritual person from Manbo Maude. I learned about prayer and how that can really change things, I learned a set of ethics and principles that have governed how I interact with world as a spiritual person and a priest, and I learned how to work my lwa to have them teach me themselves. I built my life on that foundation of principles and prayer and relationship with my spirits, and that is what I have always (and still) rely on.

I utilized all of this in community as well, and community is hard. There was a lot of learning and reflection on my part, and I did my best to keep up. I have always fallen back on the primary tool of discernment that Manbo Maude taught me; that of watching and waiting in patience. In practice, that means when I have a dream I don't understand, I don't necessarily push for meaning but I put it on the shelf and then watch what happens in my life. In relationship with community, it's the same; if I hear something I disagree with or see something that doesn't sit well with me, I sit with it and I watch and I wait and I'll probably pray about it, too. Sometimes it's something that flows along and I don't feel that I need to bring it up, and other times, it feels like something that needs to get brought up, so maybe at some point I will choose to say something. Often, I just continue to watch because not everything needs to be said by me, I don't have to be right, and sometimes the price of speaking instead of remaining silent is high.

One of the first outings my husband and I took our kiddo to was going to Sosyete Nago's Fet Kouzen this past spring. We both wanted people we cared about to meet the baby, and we wanted the baby to see the lwa. My mother, Manbo Maude, had not yet met the baby despite multiple invitations/asks from me; it was important to me that the person who had held the spot of mother in my life for years meet the baby that had been hoped for, but it didn't pan out. I stopped asking because I don't press people for things when they demonstrate they don't want it. At the time, I told myself that she was just busy, but in retrospect there was more going on.

In fact, after the fet things kind of blew up. My husband was unhappy about something and after I pressed him on it, it came out that statements had been made before the fet by an elder sibling of mine that the baby could not be his because it did not resemble him both in looks and in skin tone, because the baby had arrived early and the timeline didn't make sense, and because we had struggled quite a bit in our relationship once my husband arrived in the US so there had been presumed openings for me to cheat on my husband and try to baby trap him.

This was shocking and incomprehensible to me because why would anyone choose to be that poisonous and, frankly, that much of an asshole about a baby? And why would someone feel so free to speak about one of their siblings in our mother's house in front of our mother? I asked my husband to go through with me what happened multiple times and to tell me who else was present. I spoke with other people who witnessed this and had them go through the blow-by-blow with me as well. It seems that an innocent and funny joke was made about the kiddo, which is fine and not upsetting to me, and it seems that this person saw that as an opening and decided to really go in on our child with some really hateful stuff.

I didn't and don't understand why someone would be so hateful, and I didn't understand why that conversation would be allowed to stand. I sat with it and decided that I would speak to my mother about it after she returned from Haiti because, for me, respect is an action word and because of my respect for her I was not going to add to what she needed to do before going to Haiti in July. I convinced myself that there had to be some logical explanation for all these things.

In retrospect, that was pretty naive of me. What happened next was pretty awful: this terrible bit of poisonous gossip went everywhere, because people talk and something so egregious and outright mean is not going to stay quiet and particularly when gossip is held as a sort of social token or payment.

When I say everywhere, I mean EVERYWHERE. I watched my husband field three or four or more phone calls every day for WEEKS about this. His friends in Haiti, the US, and beyond called to ask what in god's name was going on in Boston that Sosyete Nago would be saying these things. His family heard about it and I listened to him explain to his son what was going on. His spiritual mother and his spiritual children heard about it. I had spiritual clients coming to me and asking if I was okay because of what they were hearing. My siblings in Haiti and the US heard about it.

It was awful and humiliating and at no point did my mother reach out to me and express any concern about what had been said or what was being said. I didn't believe anything that had originally been said was out of actual concern, as a person who cared about my husband and had real concern that I was so unprincipled as to cheat on him and pass off someone else's baby as his would have pulled him aside and had a private conversation. Instead, the goal of these kind of statements and the intentional use of gossip as a way to hurt someone was to hurt my husband and hurt me. There is no other reason someone would stoop so low as to speak on a child that way.

But, I told myself I would address this later. I was busy with the baby and told myself, over and over that there had to be something else going on because why would my mother tolerate something so virulent and not speak with me about it?

Then, July happened. Almost immediately after the passing of Dana, both my husband and I independently heard rumors that someone had passed away. The rumors were all over the place: someone had passed in the djevo, someone had passed during a ceremony, someone in the lakou had passed. Both of us said the same thing to people who brought those rumors forward: there is no way that someone would have passed in any of the manners described because Manbo Maude would not continue on with dances and celebratory ceremonies. Both of us stood on the fact that we knew Manbo Maude to be a generally caring and sensitive person who just wouldn't do that. I confirmed this to myself by seeing clips of happy people during fetes and house members who were present sharing photos of themselves, promoting businesses, etc.

When I found out almost a week later that we were both terribly wrong, I was shocked. I was beyond shocked, honestly. I don't know if there is a clear way to describe how truly flattened I felt to hear that someone had passed, that the someone who had passed had just emerged from the djevo, and not one thing had paused. I genuinely could not believe it, because how could something so significant and serious as a brand new manbo passing happen, celebrations continue, and the children of the house not be informed? I honestly felt like I had been steamrolled and it made me viscerally ill. One of the first things I did after getting the news from a sibling and being shown memorial posts on Facebook was vomit.

In the immediate aftermath of this bomb dropping, a lot unfolded. Several of my siblings named this event as the straw that broke their backs and reported to the community allegations and experiences of theirs that were at best extremely concerning and at worst extraordinarily problematic before leaving the sosyete. I began asking questions of others; had they heard about these allegations (because I hadn't)? What had been done to address and rectify them? I was told that these allegations were known and that no one was really sure what had concretely been done.

A little more than a week after Dana's passing, a group of elder children of Sosyete Nago was convened to presumably try to help manage these unfolding crises. A group call was scheduled within a day or two, and some of us assembled to try and address these situations. When the call began, I was direct and to the point: a public statement acknowledging Dana's passing needed to be made immediately and all public activities of the sosyete should be suspended for a full year, including the suspension of kanzo, out of respect for the passing of our sibling and to do the work to address the allegations and failings of our community. For me, this was the minimum that we could do to try and repair what was quite broken in the moment.

This was noted, but not received well. The initial reaction was that suspending kanzo would be a devastating financial blow to the house, and I found that as the immediate response troubling. Equally as troubling to me was a general chastisement of the group that we had not inquired as to how Manbo Maude was feeling and doing. That did not sit well with me and I said so: someone had died and as houngans and manbos our first responsibility is to the dead and the community that was both reeling with the loss and deeply fractured due to information and experiences coming to light.

After the call, it became clear those of us in this group of elder children had been placed in a position of trust but were not trusted. Questions were asked over and over and remained unanswered, like if the desounen had been completed, what Dana's baptism name was so she could be appropriately prayed for as she deserved, and specific questions addressing some of the rumors circulating. When I pressed for Dana's name so I could pray for my sibling and call her as the lwa called her, the group was told that the name was being kept private to keep Dana safe. The implication that her siblings were not safe people was a blow.

A continuing blow was the lack of public statement that many of us asked for over and over, both for the dignity of Dana and for the well-being of the sosyete and its members. We were continually told that multiple lawyers had been consulted and all said not to make any public statement, but how would simply acknowledging the passing of a child of the house be held as negative?

The situation continued to spiral and many of us continued to ask for action, and shared how we were personally being affected by this. For myself, I had clients pull back from me for fear of association without further information. I was threatened privately and dragged publicly, and I had just signed a contract for a book in June that was immediately suspended and probably will never see the light of day. When I shared some of this, it was responded to with a chastisement of how could we be thinking of things like this in the middle of this tragedy? Well, how was it possible then that the sosyete went forward with celebrations hours after Dana passed? There was never a response to my own sharing of what was happening for me, nor was there any response to what other siblings shared.

Folks were saying Dana had been killed or sacrificed and her death covered up, and why wouldn't they say this when the actions of the house certainly seemed suspicious? I do not believe for one minute Manbo Maude harmed Dana, and yet the handling of her death certainly left ample room for those rumors to seem very believable, which rests solely on the inaction of the sosyete.

Sosyete Nago seemed cold, callous, and cruel. There was no noting of the death of a house member who had just finished her initiation, but there were plenty of photos and video clips of smiling children of the house enjoying fets and relaxation time in Haiti, posing for photos in their special outfits, and promoting business opportunities. How would anyone think anything different when Dana passed in the morning and a kouche yanm ceremony began in the afternoon? How could this be seen as anything but an endorsement that Dana's death was unimportant?

Community meetings were held and I chose not to attend. My questions had not been answered in a more private forum so what would be the benefit to me of attending a larger forum where me asking them again would surely be viewed as troublemaking?

I continued to be disturbed by what I was seeing and hearing from these meetings and in general among the sosyete. There were statements made about how funeral rites are done that were in direct opposition to what I was taught by Manbo Maude, that the kanzo was totally normal, and excuses continued to be made as to why celebrations began immediately after Dana's passing--people had paid for spiritual work to be done so things had to be done, Dana's parent had given their okay for things to continue, the recent initiates gave their consent for things to continue, and, perhaps most disturbing, once you make a promise to spirits, you can never change that. For all the effort that was made to convince people that the right thing had been done, it hit wrong.

I was floored when it was said that promises to spirit can never be changed. This is something that applies directly to responsibilities when folks serve lwa achte, or bought spirits (sometimes called djab or pwen achte, among other things). Sosyete Nago has always represented itself as fran Ginen, meaning only lwa Ginen are served and not lwa achte. As I was taught and Manbo Maude had taught publicly over and over, lwa Ginen can always be negotiated with. You can always go back and say 'hey, it's not going to work out as I had planned, here's what I can do now until I can do what I promised'. That can be done for whatever significant reason; maybe you didn't get a chance to assemble all the money you needed or you had a big emergency you needed to take care of...or someone died.

Further, if we are to believe that spirits like Danbala, the spirit most associated with purity who cannot be served in the presence of death, and Ogou, the father of all the children of Sosyete Nago, and Ezili Danto, the fierce mother who loves her children, cannot be negotiated with after the tragic death of a newly born child, then these spirits are cruel and are not worthy of our service and attention. What parent would be angry that a celebration was suspended to mourn the death of their child?

My concerns continued to multiply:

Brand new initiates not yet finished with their eprev/period of restriction were helping with the work of death, which is strictly forbidden and can have long-lasting consequences, up to and including untimely death. I pushed back on this and asked why the principles all of us were governed with were somehow suspended in the aftermath of this tragedy and why these new initiates were not being sufficiently protected. Restrictions are put in place for a reason; while death is a natural part of life, it is a massive spiritual contamination for us, especially directly after kanzo. The response from a house member was that these new initiates had already struggled, so what did it matter? What?

Statements were made in house meetings that were extremely troubling, such as the assembled group of people on a call being the ones who were really invested in the sosyete, and, after a period of telling people what was happening next, a statement to the affect of 'if this doesn't resonate with you, let us know and we can part amicably'. Regardless of intent, this felt pretty targeted towards those of us who had spoken up and called for responsibility and adherence to the principles we had been taught. Additionally, with the traditional lakou structure of an initiatory parent and a family of children/initiates, how does this speak to the responsibility of a parent to a child? Much has been said about the contract and waiver that house members sign, but what has been unsaid is that responsibilities and expectations in relationships and contracts are not only on one side.

Instead of moving to immediately deal with allegations reported to the community, other activities were undertaken, like seating the board of a nonprofit. I found it upsetting that this was the response, instead of caring for community members. My understanding as of this writing is that none of the allegations have been addressed and no reparative action undertaken.

I sat with all of this, and it felt pretty awful. I didn't like what it said about the community I was a part of, and I didn't like how I felt as a part of it. I felt specifically that the statements being made about commitment and exiting if you don't like what is happening were incredibly divisive and, to me, dangerous. I was reminded of my history as a young person who was a part of a dangerous, cult-like religious group where statements like that and expectations around caring for the leader led to some places that were pretty dark. I didn't and don't know if that is what was happening there, but it felt like it and I spent a lot time on my own and with folks who care about me specifically trying to unpack that and look at what that meant for me and meant for the community.

I spent a lot of time metaphorically holding my head, because I felt like I had previously been blind to things that should have concerned me and because I felt like I was losing my mind. None of what was happening made sense and I couldn't find the community that I had previously committed to in the community that I was now a part of. I felt like a lot of this was a passive invitation to leave; why else would statements like this be made if it wasn't a line in the sand?

In the middle of all of that, grief. I did not know Dana well, but the grief for this situation was overwhelming. I was in tears more than I wanted to be over a life shortened and the feeling that this death did not have meaning because it had just been passed over by the community that Dana had given herself to. I questioned how this was just, and I wondered, to myself and to others, what would happen when I died. Would anyone stop to do for me what was necessary, or was it going to be business as usual?

Part of our humanity rests in how we care for our dead, because they are OURS. We are responsible for them in the moment of their death and in perpetuity. What we do and how we treat them and their death is a reflection of what we think of them and what we think of ourselves, and our treatment of them reflects deep truths about us as individuals and as community. As much as Dana belonged to her natural family, she belonged to us, too, and we failed her. Those who made the decision to continue on and embody a reality where her death made nothing pause--not even for a moment--needed to reckon with what that meant for Dana, for the community, and for themselves, and Sosyete Nago needed to reckon with what it meant to be part of a community that overlooked the death of one of its members.

Before my resignation, I saw none of that.

In the midst of this, I also was having a private, unrelated spiritual crisis. Just before Dana's passing, I had the opportunity to speak with a variety of the lwa. They were excited to see the baby, and they all told me something I wasn't expecting: they told me I had not been given the light necessary to do all my work as an asogweman. I wasn't entirely sure what that was, and said so. I was told to ask my mother, and to ask my mother why I had not been given that.

I am a curious person and investigated on my own. Manbo Maude was about to go to Haiti and there was already other discomfort for me, so I asked a few other asogwe I knew what that meant.

My siblings didn't know, but some other folks did and described a process and set of information communicated to each manbo or houngan asogwe as part of their formation that is foundational to the work of an asogwe. It was something that I had struggled with for years and years, and that I had been told nothing could be done about. I am being intentionally vague, but IYKYK. So, I resolved to do as I was told and ask my mother when there was an available time.

As the dust was forced into settling this fall, the children of Sosyete Nago were individually polled and each of us asked if we wanted to remain part of Sosyete Nago and work towards communal healing. I didn't really vibe with being asked if I wanted to stay, because, as I wrote earlier, my commitments were made long ago. When asked, I said that I made my commitments before but there were things that needed to be discussed. A time to talk was suggested, and I agreed.

Before this conversation with my mother, I spent a lot of time praying and sitting with my lwa. I felt unmoored, undermined, and pretty lost, and I didn't like where I thought the road was leading. I spent a lot of time praying for a positive outcome and for a glimpse of anything that would tell me that I was in the wrong or had outmaneuvered myself.

I also spent a fair amount of time expressing my displeasure to my lwa, with varying amounts of grace ranging from absolutely none at all to essentially weepily clinging to their legs. They were much more graceful in their responses than I was able to muster.

What turned out to be my last conversation with my mother did not go well, from my side. I spent a fair amount of time being shocked into silence and being both deeply worried and deeply sad in the same space.

The takeaways from our conversation were this:

It seems that initiates who would not otherwise know about specific information are supposed to ask to learn it. When I inquired about why I was not given the light and deliverance my title/rank indicated, the response I received was 'well, did you ask?'. Beyond the leap of logic it would take to reason out how someone is supposed to know what to ask without having been instructed in what the basic tools of their rank is, I had asked. I had asked multiple times in multiples settings over multiple years, on my own and in the presence of others, and the response I had consistently gotten was that I just needed to relax and let go, and that there was nothing that could be taught to me and no help I could receive.

Instead of being able to consider another viewpoint, experience, or conflicting information, betrayal and insidious behavior is considered foundational to any relationship or encounter that does not go as desired. For example, in discussing questions and concerns I had around particular rumors around Dana's passing, it was suggested I was speaking to people who were considered spies or betrayers. Instead of being able to consider what had to happen for someone who had invested multiple years and paid thousands of dollars for an initiation to immediately cut ties with the sosyete upon return to the US, it was stated that this person was a spy for others. I can't and don't see how someone would invest at least $8,500USD in fees alone to be a spy, and the inability or unwillingness to consider other information or extend empathy or curiousness to another viewpoint or experience.

Potential safety concerns were also included under the umbrella of betrayal or insidious behavior as well. When bringing up a concern about very specific rumors about purposeful contamination of food and water supplies in the lakou, that was labeled as a way to take Americans away from the lakou instead of entertaining if it was possible, what could be done to increase security/safety, and the reality that even rumor can make other people bold enough to act.

Gossip is considered truth and is used a social mechanism to create relationships, leverage relationships, or end them. When I brought up my concerns about what was said about child, it was very clear that what actual truth was never mattered, as my mother decided to act (or not act)based on what other people had said and never consulted me about what was being said or how I, her child, felt about it.

The place of betrayal within the community of Sosyete Nago seems to have become a central guiding principle and any relationship or situation that does not resolve in a way considered positive or that doesn't fit a predetermined idea of what it should be becomes betrayal. In our phone call, my husband become a focal figure in a narrative of betrayal that I didn't understand. When asking about why my child and my reputation as a person with principles was spoken about negatively, it was insisted (despite other persons being present relating differently) that it was my husband who stated he did not believe he was the father of our child, and I was told several times I didn't know the man I had married and similar would-be inflammatory things.

I will admit to having laughed at that, because it relied on events that were--again--based in gossip and didn't actually happen. But, further, my mother insisted that she had been forced to have my husband--a well known houngan who had worked for her and collaborated with her for at least fifteen years--in her home and her temple without her consent.

When I asked for clarification of what she meant by that and what had happened to create such a feeling of hostility, nothing was really communicated. Old issues that had been presumably settled years ago were brought back up as if brand new, and the only new event was an insistence that he did not greet her in public when he saw her at the airport. When I offered to bring him into the call to be able to clear the air and have direct communication, that was refused.

This was very confusing to me, as my mother, Manbo Maude, regularly called my husband starting from his arrival in the US in 2023 to help her with ceremonies she was holding, she commissioned him for a significant amount of tableau for a fet she was planning in Haiti, and she invited him to accompany her to Haiti this past summer. That trip did not end up happening, but it's hard for me to see where his presence was forced in her home and her community. These are also dangerous things to say in this political environment; my husband is a recent immigrant and rumors can lead to serious action at this time.

All of these things were incredibly unsettling for me, as this did not reflect how I have understood community and community relationships nor did it reflect how I had come to know Manbo Maude over the past 10+ years.

Particularly upsetting was when Manbo Maude told me directly that she had not come to see my child after they were born because of the rumors that my husband was not the baby's father and my apparent infidelity. As these rumors did not boil over until May months after my child was born, this tells me that this was a much longer situation that was purposefully held back from me.

When the person I chose as my mother told me that, I think my heart broke in a really specific way and I felt really, really stupid. She was first person I told after my husband that I was pregnant, she was the person who had the inside scoop about how the pregnancy went, and she was the first person who saw a picture of the baby after I gave birth...yet somehow she had harbored this awful belief that I was somehow capable of what rumors were saying.

Responsibility was spoken about in our call, and she stated she was responsible for me as my spiritual mother. Where was the responsibility when people were busy assassinating my character and speaking poison onto my child, for months on end? It would not have been hard to pick up the phone and call me and ask about what was being said and if I was okay, but that would require a belief that I am the one who tells the truth about my experience and that I am ultimately a respectable person.

Our conversation ended with Manbo Maude telling me she was willing to work on our relationship but that my husband was no longer welcome in her home or her temple, for perceived betrayal that was never fully explained to me. I was asked to make a decision on whether I was going to stay in Sosyete Nago and I requested time to think.

In truth, I already knew what my answer would be but I felt dizzy and disoriented after a conversation that had veered so wildly from what I had hoped it would be and I wanted to clear my head and think.

Manbo Maude stated a boundary that unfortunately meant there could no longer be an active relationship. I fully believe that an offer that excludes family is not an offer of connection, but an invitation to leave and I genuinely wish that could have just been said directly. Further, it had already been said to other people before it got to me; one of my husband's family members was called and told that they were welcome at an upcoming fet, but not to bring my husband. And, it had made it's way around local community; house members felt free enough to tell people nou pa bon avek yo, nou pap sevi avek yo ankò/we're not on good terms with them, we don't serve/work with them anymore. This is an example of how gossip is weaponized; that was said to people that are known to be friends and family of ours, so it was very clear we would hear.

As much as I was not going to disrespect Manbo Maude, her home, or her temple and bring people she didn't want there, I was also not going to disrespect my husband or my child and go places they were specifically not welcome or celebrated. So, I wrote my letter.

My resignation was the beginning of the work to understand and dig into why I needed to ask for particular information and what that meant for me, and so I got to work. As I have been very visible for the last decade and had the grace to marry someone people trust, I was able to connect with a lot of granmoun/elders and other community members. Some were people who have known my mother, some were people who knew her spiritual mother, and others were community members who gracefully were willing to entertain my questions and give me their time.

This was work I went into while holding a considerable amount of anger, which was covering up how hurt and betrayed I felt. Sosyete Nago diverges from traditional initiation formats and does not initiate anyone from outside of Haiti to sou pwen, so how was I to be expected to know what information I was to ask for, even though it is considered a foundational element? Certainly each lakou has their own regleman that they adhere to, but what does it mean to diverge so far from the general agreements asson lineages hold as a community?

This is something that has negatively affected me for years. I wrote it off as my problem because I was told it was my problem and I was comfortable with that, because my relationships with my lwa have been solid from the start, but it has affected me during fets, with clients, in dreams, and just on my own. I also am now a parent of a Haitian-American child who very clearly and decisively is a child of the lwa. Her father is an accomplished houngan but, God forbid/Bondye pa vle, what happens if he were to pass before me and my child needs assistance that I was not given the information to provide? Is my child just abandoned to whatever happens with a shrug? These are real consequences.

I spoke with a lot of people and was given a lot of grace. When you are an outsider and you start asking very particular and pointed questions about topics that can't be discussed without an assurance you have the right to even ask the question, people look at you. They test you, and they see if you are what you say you are and if the sondaj rings true. I have always been who I say I am and I know what I know, so it did.

Questions give way to answers, and answers are pieced together to a broader quilt of an answer. My siblings in the US didn't know what I was asking about, but the ones in Haiti did, and they described something not done for folks who come for kanzo from outside of Haiti. Community members described various scenarios as to how these particular things could come to pass; they described how it happens in their lakou and how they have witnessed it happen in others. I was invited to Haiti multiple times to witness how community members do these things under their own regleman.

A particular piece of knowledge that hit me kind of between the eyes came to me multiple times, from community elders and from a spirit who came down to speak. How it came from spirit was that, in the midst of our discussion on this topic, they snatched an asson out of the hands of someone nearby and kind of shook it in my face. They said (paraphrasing in English) that this (the asson) is a kalbas/gourd, a kloch/bell, and a kolye/strung beads and that you can go out and buy all of that at the market for cheap, but that the real asson is the konesans/knowledge you carry inside you, and then the spirit poked me in the side of my head to illustrate. I heard that multiple times over these conversations and it is the thing that has stuck with me: if you don't know it, do you really have it?

This did nothing to really quash my anger and I let my lwa have it. I told them that I have always trusted them (even when I have dragged my feet), that this is where that particular trust had led me, and that they now were going to do the work to fix it, since I had done nothing to get myself into my current predicament.

So they did.

I also got really seeking to understand what happens when we die, and I received similar grace from many community elders and members. I heard so many personal stories of loss that unfolded how we care for our dead.

There was the manbo who died an unnatural death just after the monte bila for a bat gè ceremony, and that caused the entire kanzo preparations and ceremonies to stop immediately. The bila was covered, the desounen completed, and nine days of bohoum/funeral rites were begun for a beloved child and community member.

There was the fet where the honored lwa just wouldn't come down, despite multiple and repeated salutes by children of the lakou and guests. Finally, after a lot of effort, the lwa came in exactly one head and sat down in the middle of the temple. They said they had come not to eat and celebrate, but to give the lakou the news that had not yet come by mouth: a lakou member had died, and the ceremony was to halt so that the funeral process could begin. Not long after that, a cousin arrived bearing news of a sudden sickness and passing of a hounsi.

There was the time when someone arrived with news of a death just as the first fet in a series of fet kay was starting, and the fet stopped and lakou members changed clothes and got in a vehicle to go retrieve the body of their sibling so that ceremonies could be done for them. The many animals purchased for the lwa were slaughtered in the names of both the lwa and the deceased, and charity was done to feed all the surrounding community, without any ceremony.

I heard about different rites, such as draping the door of the djevo in black and white so the lwa know one of their children has died, or placing a wooden cross at the gate of the lakou so the community is aware that there has been a loss. I learned about the importance of the desounen, which is the rite done immediately after passing to remove the soul of the initiate so that it can be protected and returned to the djevo it was born from or a similar safe place. I learned why we may break the krish or the kwi behind the process and how we may prepare the bohoum to honor the commitment and sacrifice of our initiation. I was gifted an immense amount of video documentation, because our grief rites are both communal and our pride; see how much we loved our child/sibling that passed? See how we made the ceremony beautiful for them? See how we all come together to do it? I even had the opportunity to talk to a spirit about this work, and they gave me the step by step of how I am to do some of these particular things, when it is time for me to do them.

The sharing of these various stories and rites (and others not shared here) bring one thing into focus: death stops for no one, but we stop for death. It is inconvenient and it can cost us money and time and days and effort, but how we greet death when it takes one of our loved ones is the final dignity we give them and it renews how we relate to each other. Sometimes that is hard. Sometimes it means we take a loss or our plans are upended, but ultimately we are held in community by our common agreements to each other and death is the one that none of us can escape so we, as houngans and manbos, must greet it well.

The importance of these things in the many forms they take in individual lakou was underlined by an elder I had the opportunity to speak with who lives locally to my former lakou and whom I have known a bit. They described how a death of a manbo or houngan will bring the local community to the lakou to visit during periods of mourning. I asked why they did not visit my mother's lakou when Dana passed and they stared at me through the video call and said that had a death happened they would have visited, but as dances had begun the same day as the supposed (to them) death, there couldn't have been anyone that had died. This certainly gave me pause to understand the depth and breadth of what had been said in the aftermath of Dana's transition.

This work to understand both of these areas underlined how interconnected Vodou is and should be beyond a lakou. Not once did anyone ask me for money or tell me I needed to have something done, as had been intimated for years would happen had I, an outsider, gone to places outside of my immediate community and spoken to other manbos and houngans. My curiosity (after assuring I had the right to be curious) was welcomed with pleasure and, when I can get back to Haiti, I have a lot of beer to drink and legume and lanbi to enjoy.

The hardest part of this work was looking at this connectedness and willingness to engage and knowing that this was something my heart was missing. After all, I am human and all I have really wanted in the very bottom of my soul is what everyone wants: a place to belong where we are loved, valued, respected, and cared for, and that left me, if it ever truly existed how I wanted and needed it to be.

But, in loss there is always gain and growth. The lwa do not leave their children in suffering and they fulfill their promises and answer prayers. This summer, my husband went to Haiti (after everything had already unfolded) and a significant part of the reason he was there was to secure our lakou. We had been gifted land in a demambwe after the birth of our child, and he went to visit it, feed it, and begin the process of standing up our lakou. I had assumed I would be limited there, but family and spirits said 'are you crazy? you belong here, too', and so I have a place to be again. We had been talking about our own lakou and sosyete for years, and the lwa fulfilled it and then some, with the addition of an inherited temple in a different area and a plan to also build another in an area we like. Every day has been a blessing, even on the worst days.

I know this writing won't be well received by everyone (or maybe anyone at all...who knows), but, transparency aside, I didn't write it for anyone but me. I know I too will be labeled a betrayer after this is published, but I have told no secrets and broken no oaths. It will likely be said that I am controlled by my husband or that he is telling me what to say, but I accept no backhanded insults about my ability to discern, reflect, evaluate, inquire, and act on my own. I also don't believe that what I will say will necessarily change anything, but I wish my departure had been an ending for gossip and challenging communication. Even now, we hear regularly from friends, clients, and family members how Sosyete Nago represents that my husband and I are working against Manbo Maude and Sosyete Nago and have brought powder into the temple, and I watch how gossip sows division and creates separation instead of increasing our connectedness and interdependence.

During the long process of discerning and writing about all of this, those were things that made me fearful, and that fear came from a place of being scared of being talked about or labeled a particular way, and that itself is my own trauma response that I have had to look at critically.

I don't need to be scared, because the truth is not scary. It can be painful and embarrassing and shocking, but not scary. I am not afraid of betrayal, because I reject that as a way of framing relationships. Instead, I choose an open heart and seek connectedness and reconciliation, across the board. I hope one day for reconciliation with Sosyete Nago and Manbo Maude, but reconciliation requires responsibility, reparative action, and change. I hope for healing for myself, for Manbo Maude and Sosyete Nago, for Dana, and for community-at-large, and I pray for peace for all who have found themselves touched by these situations.

May the lwa love us, guide us, and hold us to the high standard of our best selves, that we all may become who we are meant to be. May we choose connection over isolation, grace over fear, and choose to assume the best over assuming the worst. May the lwa bless each of you ten times as much as they have blessed me.

Alex Batagi, March 2025

#vodou #haitian vodou

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