A Photograph by Wade Davis taken in Haiti

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Empowered by the spirit, vodoun initiates embrace fire with impunity, south of the Carrefour Road, near Port-au-Prince, Haiti, 1982

Photograph by Wade Davis

Encyclopedia Brittanica's article on Efik

Efik

The Efik "Secret Society" from Wikipedia

Efik

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Ethno-linguistic groups in Nigeria

The Efik people are a branch of the Ibibio, who in the early 1600s migrated down the Cross River and founded numerous settlements in the Creek Town-Duke Town area (now in Cross River State, Nigeria), and across the river in Cameroon. This area of Nigeria is now known as Calabar and is not to be confused with Kalabari (sometimes 'New Calabar') in the Rivers State, 160 kilometres to the west.

Although their economy was originally based on fishing, the area quickly developed into a major trading centre and remained so well into the early 1900s. Incoming European goods were traded for slaves, palm oil and other palm products. The Efik kings collected a trading tax called comey from docking ships until the British replaced it with 'comey subsidies'.^[1]

The Efik were the middle men between the white traders on the coast and the inland tribes of the Cross river and Calabar district. Christian missions were at work among the Efiks beginning in the middle of the 19th century. Even by 1900, many of the natives were well educated, professed Christianity and dressed in European fashion.

A powerful bond of union among the Efik, and one that gives them considerable influence over other tribes, is the secret society known as the Egbo.

In 1884 the Efik kings and the chiefs of the Efik placed themselves under British protection. These treaties and attendant territorial economic rights, are documented in CAP 23 of Laws of Eastern Nigeria, captioned 'Comey subsidies law'.^[1] The Efik king known as Efik Monarch and Obong of Calabar still (2006) is a political power among the Efik.^[2]

References

• Waddell (1846) Efik or Old Calabar Waddell, Old Calabar;

This article incorporates text from the Calabar article in the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

1. ^ ^{a b} Fubara, Dagogo M.J. (5 March 2006) "Legendary legacies of Dappa-Biriye" The Tide Rivers State Newspaper Corp., Port Harcourt, Nigeria;
2. ^ >Nwagbara, Friday (2 June 2006) "Efik monarch withholds blessing for South-South" The Tide Rivers State Newspaper Corp., Port Harcourt, Nigeria;

External links

• Efik National Association, Inc.

See also

• Efik mythology

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efik"

Categories: Ethnic groups in Nigeria | Ibibio

An Overview of Haitian Voodoo

By Jean Leonard, student at Webster University, 1994

Publisher's note: This was a student paper from Bob Corbett's course on Haitian Voodoo. It is present in this set of archives at his recommendation and with the student's permission. It consists of two letters written home by a fictitious character, named Aimee.

Dear Mom,

Thanks so much for the early Christmas card - it meant a lot. It has really been difficult for me to adjust to college life. I never realized what a challenge it would be to live alone and away from home for the first time. It hasn't been easy. I still question my choice not to live in the dorms. This apartment has become quite a burden to my bank account. Also, living off campus has made it harder to make any friends from school. Friends? Ha! What are those? I've been so busy trying to keep up in all of my classes (college is much harder than high school!!) and working so I can afford my apartment that I've had no time to socialize. Things are definitely different than they were one year ago when I was living at home and breezing through high school! So your Christmas card helped take away some of the loneliness - thanks.

And Mom, don't worry about me, either. Yes, New York can be very scary - but I take all of the necessary precautions to protect myself. I can only do so much, and the rest I leave up to my spirits. Remember my telling you about that neat lady I met in Brooklyn? Alourdes is her name.

Anyway, I know that when I told you about her, you didn't approve because she practices Voodoo. (Yes- this again!!) But, Mom, Alourdes and this way of life - the Voodoo spirits we follow (yes, we) - have become so significant to my life that I need for you to try to understand this world. I've taken vows and I'm now married to my special spirit, or loa. This event has been a turning point in my life, and I want to explain it all to you so you'll understand and not worry so much about me.

I indicated earlier that I've felt lonely and alienated, but the loneliness has subsided a little. Two months ago I was at my wit's end with it. But now, since I've discovered the loa, I've achieved some peace. I had heard about Alourdes from someone I work with. He knew I'd been struggling and told me that Alourdes was a healer and that she could help me. I was so desperate that I was ready to try anything. I knew there was the possibility that she could be just another hoax who was out to rip me off, but that was a chance I was willing to take. Well she isn't a hoax, and I knew this the minute I set foot in her house. She treated me with such concern - she really wanted to help me. Mom, I know you think Voodoo is some sort of evil cult. And I'll admit, I at one time questioned its validity as well, but this is so far from the truth. I wish more people knew how beautiful the world of the loa really is. Advocates of Voodoo have worked hard to change its image. Some writers have even tried to change the spelling of the word Voodoo (to vodun, vaudin, vodoun, vodou, vaudoux) in attempts to disguise it. It is widely believed by some defenders of Voodoo that the mere word, Voodoo, holds such negative connotations in peoples' heads that they immediately close their mind when they see the word and they won't read any further about it. Sound familiar?

Anyway Mom, I'm here to tell you that Voodoo - no matter how you spell it - is a positive religion. True, it has its negative aspects, but so do all religions. Most of the negative stuff you've seen and heard about Voodoo (cannibalism; dolls with pins in them; zombies; black magic) is either completely false or so rare that it hardly ever takes place. But c'mon, you and I both know that Hollywood producers aren't going to profit by making a two hour movie portraying a day in the life of the Catholic Church. But if a movie-maker can get some kind of negative angle on a religion - something out of the ordinary, like an exorcism or devil worship, then those producers will take this all the way to the bank! After all, Aunt Evelyn is Catholic, but I'd be willing to bet that she's never once gone to church and found the crucifix upside down or blood where the holy water is suppose to be. Well, I've never been to a Voodoo ceremony where there are dolls with pins in them, or people getting sacrificed and eaten. Just as there have been occasional exorcisms within the Christian religion, and a small percentage of people who worship the devil - Voodoo also has its dark side. But also like Christianity, Voodoo's darker side isn't nearly as graphic as Hollywood portrays it. Take zombification for example: when you break it down, its just a boring technical procedure where some guy called a bokor (he's basically like a priest gone bad) administers a few drugs that knocks the person (zombi) out and leaves him or her helplessly dazed for the rest of his or her life. It's pretty basic stuff. No wands or whips or daggers. Even the evil spells that bokors put on people sound anti-climactic (When a bokor puts a bad spell on someone, he says he's doing work on that person). All that an evil spell really does (if it works) is give the recipient of the spell some bad luck. And bad luck can be anything from a bladder infection to a plane crash. Still, there is no blood dripping from ceilings, and there are no human organs in the middle of dinner tables.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to defend the evil, or dark side of Voodoo. I think it's horrifying, and that's why I don't practice it. I stick with people who follow the nice spirits - the sweet loa we call them. No one I know even practices Voodoo with their left hand. Alourdes, my friend that I mentioned earlier, is a mambo (Voodoo priestess) and she practices Voodoo with her right hand - meaning she follows the sweet loa, too. This side of Voodoo that I associate with (and so do 95% of all of the people who follow the spirits) is called the Rada side. In Rada Voodoo, the only time it can really get nasty is when the spirits are upset. See, Mom, these spirits aren't like the big almighty Christian God who's way up there in the sky. The Voodoo God - we call him/her Bondye or sometimes Granmet, (Grand Master) - is too busy and also, quite frankly, he/she is too snobbish. My spirits have feelings just like I do. They're not too high and mighty to talk to little old me. They understand me. My spirits know what it's like to be angry, sad, happy, lonely, or tired. They can feel that way, too. That's why they can sometimes get a little nasty, If I ignore them, they feel jilted just like I would if someone ignored me. So, yeah, things can sometimes get a little strange - if I ignore my spirits I'm liable to run into some sort of misfortune (illness, accident etc.) But they're usually pretty forgiving, and they give ME a lot of notice when they're upset (my professor at school calls my spirits Anthropomorphic).

I don't want you to get the wrong impression - my spirits aren't so temperamental that they can't be relied upon. They're benevolent spirits as long as I remember them. Our relationship is based on love. I love and adore my spirits, and they love and protect me.

There are a lot of loa, too. I'm not responsible for all of them, though - just my personal spirits. I already told you that I married my special spirit, Loko. The ceremony was about a month ago. It was really neat. Loko is kind of in charge of nature. He's really into leaves and herbs, and Alourdes says he's the guard of sanctuaries and upholder of justice. The reason I married him out of all of the other spirits is because he is the spirit that is most like myself (No wonder I'm studying law!) It's funny 'cause there are all these other spirits that I thought I would be way more compatible with than I am with Loko. Papa Ghede is the loa of eroticism; life and death; protector of children; guardian of the cemetery; and just a real funny guy who likes to smoke cigars (you know how I love the smell of cigar smoke!) Agwe is the spirit of the sea. Ougon is the strong, dominant, and prophetic warrior spirit. Erzulie is the refined loa of love and beauty who likes to flirt and get attention. It's interesting because she's so lovely and happy all throughout ceremonies, but right before she leaves she gets real sad and sinks into a deep depression that she bears all alone because no one can comprehend her pain. But the thing is - she comprehends everybody else's pain (maybe that's why she cries?) Anyway, there's also Dumballah, who is a snake spirit. He's a real loving father-figure type. Then there's Zaka, Papa Ghede's brother, and he's kind of gross. He's just really immature and sometimes acts disgustingly. Ghede usually gets lewd at ceremonies, but it's all in good humor. However when Zaka acts that way, it's not always funny. He's just not as smooth at it as Ghede is.

Simba is one of the Petro spirits, they're more angry than sweet. They often get a bad rap. Most of the left handed Voodoo is from the Petro spirits, but there is also a justified rage in Petro which Haitian history explains. Anyway, Simba rules the waters. Ti-Jean is another Petro spirit.

Gran Bwa is the guy we go to when somebody wants to be initiated into the priesthood. Ayida and Erzulie are both married to Dumballah. But I guess the most important spirit is Papa Legba. Legba is so important because without him, we can't get to our other spirits. He's kind of like a telephone operator because he connects you with the spirit you need to get a hold of. We call Legba's role opening the gates to the spirit world. Legba is a Rada spirit, so when bokors want to do work on somebody and they need to open the gates to the Petro spirits, Kalfu is who they ask.

So do you see what I mean about there being a lot of spirits?! That's why I couldn't believe it when Alourdes told me that Loko is my spirit. I thought for sure that my bouts with depression were enough evidence to prove that I belonged with Erzulie; or my love of swimming and the ocean would surely make me one of Agwe's descendents. Heck, even Papa Ghede and I both love children! But the more I think about it, the more I know that Alourdes is right. Every day I learn more and more about Loko. The other day I surprised Alourdes with a birthday cake. She wanted to know how I found out it was her birthday, and I just smiled mysteriously. It wasn't until then that Alourdes told me I was so much like Loko 'cause he hears everything. She said he's like the wind and you never know when he's around! I thought that was pretty neat. The more I get to know Alourdes, the more I'm amazed at how brilliant she is. I can't even fathom how she can see so much in people. Just by talking with someone, she can see deep within her psyche, and can detect who her personal loa are. She claims she knew Loko was my main spirit before she ever even met me! She said she had a dream where her spirit (Ougon) told her I'd be coming to her and she should take care of me! Then, when she read my cards that first day, she told me that the spirits sent me to her. At the time I was confused, but now, in retrospect, I think she was right. I think that my loneliness and frustration with school and my financial insecurity were all results of the work of the spirits. Ever since I've been following the loa, my life has been virtually trouble-free. Someday I hope to become more than a serviteur in Voodoo. I'd like to be further initiated into Voodoo in a ceremony called lave-tet. Alourdes calls this a washing of the head, and she says I'll know when I'm ready for it because my spirits will let me know.

Anyway Mom, I'm really excited about all of this. I'm happy with the direction my life is moving. I hope I didn't shock you, or even bore you with all of this new information. I know it's a lot to digest, but it is vital to me that I share myself with you because I don't want us to grow apart. Please let me know how all of this hit you. I'm anxious to hear your opinion. And remember also, that I am under the care and protection of my spirits, so you don't need to worry about me.

Thanks again for the card!

Love Always, Aimee

---

Hi Mom!

Wow! Thanks for writing me back so quickly! I didn't expect to hear from you for at least a few weeks. I'm so excited that you read my last letter with such an open mind. I appreciate that. And I'm glad that you want to know more about the loa.

First, in answer to your question: no, I'm not studying Catholicism in school! I alluded to it so much in my last letter because it happens to have a lot to do with the Voodoo religion. The two religions are intertwined. You see, when the slaves were brought over to Haiti from Africa in 1503, they were forbidden by their owners (first the Spanish, but mainly the French) to practice Voodoo. However, the French did force Catholicism on the slaves. But the weird thing was - the French slave owners really didn't tell the slaves anything about the Catholic religion; the slaves were left clueless. The French were afraid that the slaves would take all of the Catholic teachings to heart and realize from these doctrines that they had rights as human beings, and that slavery was wrong. The French wanted to keep the slaves under control. So the slaves went along using the Catholic religion as a cover-up - adopting the Catholic saints and symbols - and then worshipping their Voodoo spirits under the facade of a Catholic ceremony. So a lot of the Voodoo spirits to this day are associated with Catholic saints (Erzulie is associated with the Virgin Mary; Ougon with St. Jacques; Legba with St. Peter; Damballah with St. Patrick, etc). So, no, I haven't converted to Catholicism, too!

Also, I'm sorry I didn't explain myself better concerning my marriage to Loko and my interactions with other spirits. I can see how you would be confused. I left out a major detail. No, the spirits don't come to ceremonies as ghosts. They actually talk to us through other people at the ceremonies. The spirits take over, or possess, a person's body. We call this mounting a person because it's as if the spirits were on the person and ride him or her as if they're a horse. When a person is mounted like this, his or her own soul goes away to make room for the loa. Loko possessed a renowned Voodoo priest (houngan) who happened to be at our marriage ceremony. So that's how I married Loko.

Another thing I wanted to address was your worry over the actual ceremonies. Yes, there are animal sacrifices. But usually it's only a chicken or rooster that we sacrifice. And it's necessary because that's how we feed our spirits. The loa get energy - their life-force - from the sacrificed animals' souls. We don't sacrifice any animals unless we're suppose to. If they don't eat the veve (drawings made out of cornmeal) then that means the loa will not accept our sacrifice.

The ceremonies are actually very fun. There's lot's of food and good music (there're usually three drums which are beaten incessantly), and normally three or four of the spirits show up. It's like a great party and it goes on all night long. Although I've heard it's a lot more fun to be at a Voodoo service in Haiti. Alourdes is from Haiti and she goes back often to pay homage to her dead relatives (this is where I luck out, 'cause all of my dead relatives' bodies are here in America). She says the ceremonies in Haiti are more intense because they're outdoors and held on the soil. So they're more in touch, and everything's more real.

Anyway, speaking of the spirits, I have a date with Loko tonight. Every Saturday night I make sure I go to bed alone (I do that every night anyway!) because that's my time for Loko.

So good-bye for now, and thanks for showing interest in my world and my spirits. If you have anymore questions, I'll be happy to answer them.

Love Always, Aimee

Hugh Cave On Voodoo

Date: Sun, 16 Jul 1995 21:24:55 -0700 (PDT)
From: Bob Corbett
Subject: H29: Hugh Cave on Voodoo
Message-Id:

On Voodoo

By Hugh B. Cave, 16 July 1995

Hugh Cave, author of Haiti, Highroad to adventure, lived in Haiti for more than 5 years in the 1950s. He has written the book mentioned above, plus many short stories, including The Mission, which I've posted earlier on the main list. The essay below he wrote a long time ago, but I don't have a date for it.

Note from Bob Corbett: I don't know the date of publication, but it is was written some time ago. He mentions Michael Jackson in one image. When did he first appear on the scene of U.S. pop culture?

edited slightly by Bob Corbett

---

A while ago I attended a Voodoo service in Haiti at which a writer of Sunday features for American newspapers happened to be present.

One doesn't often find outsiders at an authentic Voodoo service. Getting into such a gathering is difficult without personal contacts, and the real thing usually takes place too far from the capital to be convenient for people spending only a short time in Haiti. There are ceremonies offered in or near Port-au-Prince for tourists, of course, but these are little more than folklore presentations staged for money. Real Voodoo is a religion, concerned not with tourists but with the invocation and worship of gods and spirits.

The service mentioned was in the seaside town of Petit Goave, about 45 miles from the capital on the Southern Peninsula. Rural slums line both sides of the main shipping district. The land is flat and dusty, except when the wet-season rains transform it into a chocolate pudding that smells rather cozily of donkey droppings. Many of the town's buildings are typically old-style Haitian, two-storied, unpainted, with wrought-iron balconies. Not the most pleasant country town in Haiti. Nor was the gentleman in question the most pleasant of visitors.

Obnoxious in the extreme, he got into trouble first with his arrogance, then with his camera. A guest at a Voodoo service is not expected to whip out a camera and start taking flash pictures any more than one at a church service in, say, New York would be expected to do so. Certainly not without asking permission first. Then because the gentleman spoke no Creole and could not understand what he was being told, he became even more arrogant and was asked to leave.

Probably nothing much would have happened to him had he refused. In five years of residence in Haiti and many return visits I have met very few violent Haitians. But he did leave, and later wrote a rather long article about what he had witnessed. A friend, happening to see it, sent me a copy.

In this story our writer described the ritual dancing and singing at the Voodoo service as a wild sex orgy. The simple offering of a chicken as food for the gods was called an unholy animal sacrifice, with so much about blood in it that his readers must have expected the newspaper page to drip all over them. Worse, he completely missed a really dramatic event that took place before his eyes.

(Though he and I were the only non-Haitians present, I hadn't attempted to explain anything to him. He had come in late and seated himself across the peristyle form where I was, and then he began brandishing his camera. I thought it wise to keep my distance lest I be thought, by Haitian friends present, to approve of his behavior.)

The service was one to Cousin 'Zaca, the patron loa of the peasant farmer. Normally this means a rather uneventful evening with touches of country humor. Some fellow is possessed by 'Zaca and, with a colorful sisal handbag draped over one shoulder, goes through the motions of sowing seed. (There isn't space in an article of this length to describe any Voodoo service in detail; all I can hope to do is supply a touch of color.) My point here is that a second possession soon took place at this service, and arrival number two from the world of the spirits was the redoubtable Gede Nimbo, more often called Papa Gede, the guardian of the cemetery.

Now Papa Gede is Death, and he is at all times a jokester, which is why he often comes uninvited to a service. He likes to strut around with two cigarettes in his mouth, a top hat and black coat on, and an outthrust hand eagerly tickling female bottoms. His favorite libation, almost always awaiting him in case he does show up, is a first-distillation rum called clairin in which red-hot peppers have been steeped for weeks until it's fiery enough to sear the gullet of a granite statue.

So while our gentleman of the press was furiously taking pictures of the drummers, the dancers, the farmer who'd become Cousin 'Zaca, a boy about eight years old, sitting next to me on my bench, became possessed by Papa Gede and took off like Michael Jackson!

I had been talking to this boy. He had come with his mother from a home in the Hills a few miles away. His name, he said, was Ti Bagay -- obviously a nickname, for it means Little Thing. He was so pitifully frail that he looked as though an ounce or two of anything alcoholic would probably kill him. Keep that in mind.

When the loa mounted him - took possession of him, that is - the lad leaped to his feet with a wild yell an raced to the poteau mitan, the sacred central post at the base of which gifts are offered to the gods. As it happened, the houngan (priest) and his assistants at this service were people of foresight. Among the offerings was a bottle of Gede's favorite pepper-spiked raw rum. Originally the bottle had held a fifth of Haiti's marvelous Rhum Barbancourt, and it was full.

Also available for Gede if he came were a top hat, cigarettes, and matches.

When Ti Bagay slapped the hat on his small head, only his protruding ears kept it from thumping his shoulders. He stuffed two cigarettes into his mouth and lit them with a flourish. Snatching the full bottle of spiked clairin off the concrete slab at the base of the post, he thumbed the cork out and began prancing around the peristyle.

As I've told, Papa Gede delights in pinching female bottoms. Ti Bagay pinched away with equal enthusiasm. Gede gulps down his favorite drink - which, by the way, when mixed this way, is called in Creole a trompe. Ti Bagay gulped it down, too.

He emptied the bottle. And all the time he was doing this, our reporter with the camera was so busy with everyday other things that he couldn't see a genuine Voodoo mystery unfolding before his eyes. Because Ti Bagay did not get drunk. Oh, he staggered a bit - perhaps as much from the speed of his dancing as from the trompe. And beads of sweat literally flew from him as he danced. And his eyes rolled at times. But he emptied that fifth of raw rum spiked with red-hot peppers and became neither drunk nor ill.

It should have killed him, medics have told me.

When the bottle was empty, Ti Bagay returned it to the base of the post, took off his top hat and coat, and calmly walked into the sacred hounfor at the end of the peristyle. But in just a few minutes he reappeared, returned to his place beside me on the bench, and sat down.

Ti Bagay, I said, do you know what you just did?

He didn't. He was not even aware that he had left the bench. When I enlightened him, he at first seemed astonished, then delighted, that Papa Gede should have chosen him. He said he had never been possessed by a loa before.

The service over, I made my way to the poteau mitan and picked up the trompe bottle from which the boy had drunk. There were a few drops of the fiery rum left in it. I poured them into my cupped hand and touched my tongue to the stuff, just to make sure. For hours afterward my mouth was on fire.

Now if our gentleman of the press had written about that, instead of about sex orgies and unholy animal sacrifices, he might have told his readers something about Voodoo. But my hunch is that he already knew what he was going to write before he ever got to the service, because he'd been reading what others like him had written and was too mired in his own preconceptions to respond to the unexpected.

He wasn't the first, of course. He won't be the last.

For one thing, the observer who can't speak or at least understand Creole cannot possibly understand what goes on at a Voodoo service. Could a visitor from Outer Mongolia comprehend what goes on at a Georgia camp meeting? And along with a knowledge of Creole, a background in African and Haitian history would be a help. Voodoo came from Africa in the slave ships, and the Creole tongue of today's Haitian peasant evolved from slavery as well. Coming from many different African tribes, those ancestors of today's peasants had no common language. Creole is a result of their efforts to find one by imitating the speech of their French masters.

I have extracted a handful of exaggerations from newspaper clippings and pulp tales in my files. Here they are, with a few comments:

1. Sticking pins in Voodoo dolls to torment or kill an enemy.

I've attended many different kinds of Voodoo services in Haiti's villages and mountains and have yet to see a pin stuck in a doll of any kind. Small dolls depicting the various loa are sometimes found on hounfor altars, but these are used in ceremonies. If anyone does stick pins in dolls for evil purposes, it would have to be a bocor (sorcerer) and he would do so for a fee. The bocor has about as much to do with true Voodoo as a devil-worshipper has to do with Christianity.

2. Sex orgies.

This may be sadly disillusioning, but there is very little sex in Voodoo. Erzulie, the love loa, when possessing a female participant at a service, may command the sexual attention of a chosen male. This is a form of sex, no doubt, though ritualistic rather than orgiastic. But any other sex that takes place is likely to be between young couples who slip away from the festivities for fum and games of their own in the surrounding darkness.

3. Bloodthirsty animal sacrifices.

Chickens are frequently killed as food for the loa. Sometimes their necks are wrung; other times their heads are cut off; occasionally they are seized by the neck and whirled around the whirler's head at high speed. In two of the newspaper clippings from my files the writers claim to have see houngans bite the heads off chickens. Well, my dictionary says there are certain carnival people, called geeks, who perform sensationally morbid or disgusting acts, as biting off the head of a live chicken, and I saw it done once at a ceremony for tourists. But - sorry - I've never seen it done at an actual Voodoo service.

Other animals sacrificed are goats, sheep, and bulls, though the latter are too valuable to be used in any but very special services. I once attended what is probably the most secret Voodoo service of all, the annual week-long affair called La Souvenance, held in special fenced-in village in the foothills near Gonaives. This service is so special that only houngans and mambos (priestesses) attend it, and having once checked in, no one is permitted to leave until the week is over.

At such an affair one would perhaps expect the most esoteric of sacrifices, but the only unusual animal I saw offered to the gods was a large ram. I did, however, see the rare assator drum played - this one was more than eight feet high and was played by men on ladders! - and I met a possessed old Haitian who claimed to be Moses and talked fluently for half an hour in what I think was Hebrew.

4. Nakedness.

This crops up time and again in stories about Voodoo. Naked dancers flinging themselves about in a frenzy are stock characters, it would seem. Well, I'm sorry. I've seen and photographed any number of naked peasant women washing themselves and their laundry in country streams (you first talk to them and make friends), but not once have I seen anyone naked at a Voodoo service. The trend is just the opposite: to flowing white robes for the women and gaudy costumes for the men.

5. The Voodoo spell or curse.

Again I say maybe. A friend of mine who taught English at the College St. Martial in Port-au-Prince once let me examine a hand-lettered volume compiled by a fellow priest whose forte was botany. This man had spent years collecting Haiti's medicinal plants so that he could describe and do watercolors of them. There were 383 such plants listed, and most were poisonous if taken in large enough doses.

Your houngan or mambo knows most of these plants and can employ them in such a way that a curse or spell might seem to have been cast upon the recipient. Really, though, that isn't Voodoo. It comes under the heading of witchcraft of sorcery again, and the bocors who practice those dark arts are loners. Zombies, for instance, are a product of the bocor, never of the Voodoo houngan or mambo.

6. Human skulls at Voodoo ceremonies.

Where, oh where, do these writers see such things? I've been in all parts of Haiti. I walked across the wild, roadless mountains of the Southern Peninsula - a grand adventure that provided background for Legion of the Dead. I rode mule-back through the equally wild and roadless Massif du Nord - which provided background material for The Evil. I wore out four jeeps exploring the country's back roads. A study of Voodoo was part of all this. And not once have I seen a human skull at a Voodoo service. A bovine skull now and then, yes. And sometimes skulls of goats. But never a human one.

7. People dancing barefoot on live coals.

Yes, sometimes. But more often the people who do this are walking, not dancing, and appear to be in some kind of trance. Some Pacific Islanders perform the same ritual. But some Voodooists are able to do an even more impressive thing that our people of the press don't seem to have caught up with yet. They build a fire of charcoal, plant a tall iron bar like a crowbar in it, wait for the bar to become white hot, them grasp it in bare hands and parade around the tonelle or peristyle holding it above their heads.

Incidentally, at a brule zin, which is an initiation service for those about to become hounsi kanzo, the initiates go through an even more remarkable ritual. To describe this service would take thousands of words. I did so in Haiti: Highroad to Adventure. But in the end there are seven iron cooking pots full of oil, with fires blazing under them. The initiates are required to proceed slowly form pot to pot, dipping their right hands in each. Something they have acquired through weeks of meditation and preparation prevents the boiling oil from stripping their hands to the bone, but what it is I don't know.

8. The mad, frenzied dancing.

Give the movie-makers a black mark on this one, along with the writers. I don't recall the names of the pictures, but at least three times I've sat through so-called Voodoo movies in which the dancing was atrociously unVoodoo. Fact is, all the dancing at a Voodoo service is ritual dancing and much of it is slow. The only time I've ever seen frenzied dancing was one, in Quartier-Morin near Cap Haitien, when more than a dozen spectators appeared to become possessed at the same time. It was probably some kind of mass hysteria, and even so, it wasn't as wild as what some of our teenagers indulge in.

9. And finally, child sacrifice.

We should at least mention this because so many sensation-seeking writers seem to feel they have to. The facts? One of the very first books about Haiti discussed the sacrifice of children at Voodoo ceremonies. I threw the book out of my library years ago because it contained so many errors; therefore I can't turn to it now to determine whether its author claimed to have actually seen a child sacrifice or merely heard about one. I tend to remember he got his information secondhand, as he did nearly everything else in his book. Later writers copied him, of course. Anything as sensational as that was bound to attract the titans of titillation. But I have never heard even a whisper about child sacrifice from anyone in Voodoo, and I doubt it ever happened.

If I seem to be overly defending Voodoo here, perhaps a bit of summing up is in order. Voodoo, again, is a religion. This doesn't mean that all houngans and mambos are saints, any more than all Protestant ministers and Catholic priests are saints. Unquestionably there are houngans and mambos who engage in extracurricular activities for whatever they can get out of it, though the Haitian peasant certainly hasn't much to be fleeced out of.

But Haiti, remember, is a poverty-stricken country with few doctors, and most of those are beyond the peasants' reach. Take away the houngan and the mambo, with their handed-down knowledge of herbal medicine, and the country people would have no one to turn to when sick. Then take away the Voodoo loa to whom they look for guidance in just about everything that touches their lives, and they would feel abandoned. That's the right word: abandoned. Few outsiders seem to understand this.