Vodou Festival

Festival Location: Gonaives, Haiti

Festival Type(s): Religious Events, Cultural Festivals, Traditional Festivals

Vodou Festival Media:

Vodou (Voodoo) Festival

By: © Kirsty Henderson 2009

Despite being demonized by many people, Vodou (Voodoo) is not the savage quasi-religion the horror movies would have you believe. It is still widely practiced in the Caribbean nation of Haiti (often alongside Christianity) and is a religion, culture and philosophy encompassing music, dance, language, justice, storytelling, art and ritual.

I spent four months living in Gonaives, Haiti and made a lot of local friends during that time. While many of my Haitian friends are pretty devout Christians, some also adhere to Vodou customs due to it being such an important part of the country's culture. One of my local friends, Jude, is a follower of Vodou and some of his family members are priests. When he invited a few of us along to a Vodou ceremony, we couldn't resist.

Myself, three friends and Jude headed towards the Vodou church with a stop on the way to buy a bottle of Barbancourt rum, the Haitian drink of choice. Apparently drinking rum with the priest is an important part of the experience. A religion where you get to drink rum in church? I was intrigued.

On this particular occasion the ceremony was taking place as part of a larger Vodou festival that was being held in Gonaives, Haiti's second largest city located north of Port-Au-Prince, the capital. The street leading up to the Vodou church was full of people, food stalls, souvenir stands and tables with people playing traditional games of chance. The place was packed and we all held on to one another as we snaked through the heaving crowd.

We arrived at the church/random building to find that a crowd so large had gathered that made getting even remotely close to the ceremony was going to prove impossible. This is where being an obvious tourist in a city the gets no tourists comes in handy. Myself, my three friends and Jude were instantly ushered from the outskirts of the crowd into the very centre of the action. The people in the crowd were the ones urging us to go ahead of them and it was amazing to be shown such hospitality.

We arrived at the front of the mass of people and were led under a rope and eventually to the front of the action where we sat down on some steps and were treated like guests of honour. The priest was doing his thing, dancing and drinking rum and looking cool and he was surrounded by about 20 women who were whirling around in beautiful light blue and white dresses as though they were in a trance. To the left of us were some drummers pounding away on huge, almost medieval-looking homemade drums.

The women danced for hours without so much as a sip of water. We were sitting on the steps, chatting to people around us, passing our bottle of rum around and offering it up to the priest who enjoyed a few sips. When we ran out, he presented us with a brand new bottle of the good stuff (ours was the budget variety). The priest had some kind of perfumed water in a bottle in one hand and what looked like baby powder in the other. He worked his way through the dancers, chanting and dousing them occasionally with water and powder as they continued to sing and move around to the beat of the drums.

Eventually, as more rum was consumed, my friends and I found ourselves right in the thick of things, dancing alongside the women who had been at it for hours by now. They danced with us and some even appeared to be possessed by the spirits that had been summoned by the priest.

The ceremony was beautiful and fascinating and although we left after a few hours, unable to keep up with the pace, it went on all night. It was a truly awesome experience and we were all thankful for a small glimpse into the fascinating culture of Haitian Vodou.

by Kirsty Henderson

Vodou Festival Photos: