MAKA

In my tenth year, a man was brought to my parents.  His skin was as black as the onyx stone in my mother’s ring. It glistened with sweat, and he was in obvious pain from the large, infected wounds in his legs and wrists. Father would later tell me these were from steel manacles that were used in the slave trade, which was rampant during this time. Those that brought him to us had found him deep in the swamp, alone and wounded.

Father prepared a poultice of honey and herbe á malo also known as lizards’ tail.  This was a powerful healing poultice that also offered sedative properties. Mother spooned out a dose of elderberry and mangler tonic to aid in the man’s chills, fever and to boost his immunity. They covered him with warm blankets and the three of us took turns watching over him through the night.

For days, he seemed to worsen.  His breathing became labored, and his skin became blotchy. Father feared he would need to remove the leg, but mother persisted in her attention to the wound. In the fourth day, his fever broke and he opened his eyes to the wood-beam ceiling of our home.

With barely a whisper, we ascertained his name was Maka, son of Makandal. Mother and father offered their names, which he repeated. I offered him a hand sign to communicate my name, which was simply the index finger raised to my lips, as if you were asking someone to be quiet.  I ran air through my front teeth making the ssshhh sound. I had been mute since birth and this was an appropriate name everyone could identify,  just as my name sign was easy for people to remember. Maka accepted with a slight smile and a nod before drifting back to sleep.

In the following weeks as he healed, we were to learn much from Maka. His father was Makandal, native of Nigeria and a priest of Iwa, an African religion that centered on the creator “Bondyé”, who created spirits that could be either human or divine. The regions of Nigeria, Benin and Togo boasted millions of Yoruba people. For these tribes, Iwa was a formidable and mature religion. As an omoluabi, or a person of integrity who was highly revered in Yoruba society, Makandal served as both spiritual and community leader.

Maka delved deep into history to share with us his coming to be on our home.  The story began two hundred years prior, with the Spanish arrival in the Americas, bringing both disease and exploitation of the natives.  As the Spanish conquered the Americas, they needed labor to work their lands, and they turned to Africa, bringing men, women and children across great oceans as slaves.  The slavers, men of fortune, herded the Yoruba, Kongo and Fon like cattle into the holds of ships bound for Haiti, the slaving capital of the Americas.  Here, over five hundred thousand African men, women and children would be imprisoned next to slaves of the Inca, Aztec and Americas.  They were sold to the highest bidder as property.  Some found homes that treated them as valuable investments, others were sold as  tools to be used, abused and discarded.

Haiti was a French Colonial province at the time, brutally ruled by the Catholic Church. Under decree by King Louis XIV, Code Noir required slave owners to have their slaves baptized and instructed in Roman Catholic doctrine. This abraded many slave owners who did not want their slaves wasting valuable work time celebrating saint’s days, and they feared the congregation of the religious. Slaves to come together socially encouraged talk and alliance.  The slave owners feared this would lead to revolt.

For priests of Iwa, like Makandal, this Catholic influence, combined with the various religions of the African Nations and the South Americas became a single theology that Makandal thought had one time been a united religion that had been torn asunder by forces and geography.  In an effort to put the pieces of these beliefs back together, Makandal developed an entirely new theology. One that embodied Catholicism and Freemasonry, borrowed influence from his African beliefs and those of both Inca and Aztec of the Americas to establish a version which gutted all known religions and rebuilt them into a single theology that made sense to Makandal and his followers. 

Makandal borrowed the Fon word Vôdoun, for spirit or deity, and declared this new religion Vodou.  Within Vodou Makandal became an oungan (priest) and his adherents founded small ounfò’s(temples) for the gathering and disseminating of the Vodou religion.

Vodou was a theology of a new transcendent creator.  Within this new Vodou, there were not just one Iwa, but one thousand Iwa, each falling under the pantheons of Rada or Petwo.  Rada Iwa are often seen to be of peaceful countenance and benevolence, but they can also be vindictive if displeased.  The Petwo are forceful, aggressive and dangerous, but may also be protective and generous to the living.  Within Vodou, spirits could be taken into a body for both good and evil purposes.  The same was seen with healing and hurting.  Vodou ritual could heal the ill, or be used to create injury or illness to an enemy.  The ritual killing of animals was an offering to the Iwa, and the feeding gained favor and respect, increasing the power of your ritual. It was discovered that the combining of rituals from these other regions and religions amplified the strength and presence of the Iwa Spirits that an oungan could use to heal, harm or help the people.

Thus, Vodou embodied a belief that Makandal taught and practiced throughout his life in Haiti.  He passed his knowledge on to his son Maka, who followed in his footsteps as a priest, and was highly revered by the people in his own right.

Vodou spread widely through the slave prisons within Haiti.  Eventually, it spread to the Caribbean islands and Americas where it was modified into Cuban Santeria, Brazilian Candomblé and modern paganism. Over time, it would blend with the Christian religions like Mormonism. In American Louisiana it became known as Voodoo, a comical and tourist version of the original Vodou.

As Vodou gained in popularity among the slave communities, there became a new unrest.  With Haitian slaves outnumbering Europeans eleven to one, it was only a matter of time before a revolution occurred. Makandal, along with other oungan’s completed a Vodou ritual, after which they massacred whites in the local area.  Emboldened, a revolution was declared, and the French sent Generals Napoleon Bonaparte and Charles LeClerc to quell the unrest.  In 1801, the French conceded defeat, and Haiti became a new republic. In protest, the Roman Catholic Church abandoned Haiti, and Vodou took over the churches and congregations left behind. This transformed Vodou from a cult to a true religion.

Politics and religion are bedfellows.  They rise together, but prey on each other without hesitation when challenged. Vodou had helped to liberate the Haitian people, but with the increasing popularity of Vodou as a religion, the president of Haiti accused Makandal and many of his fellow oungan’s of killing a child and eating it in a Vodou ritual. Thus, Maka’s father Makandal was burned at the stake and Maka himself was put on a slave ship to Louisiana. As they approached port, Maka had thrown himself, manacles and all, into the water, sinking below the arrows and shot that attempted to stop him.  He had held his breath underwater for long moments until his body demanded oxygen, and he erupted to the surface with the ship far beyond him. Fighting the weight of the cuffs and chains, he swam to shore, and escaped into the swamps. He had found a small barn that contained an iron chisel and single-jack hammer, and he had used these to remove his manacles, but the swamp had done its job, infecting and festering the open wounds left behind. Had he not been discovered when he did, he would surely have succumbed.

Despite the manacle wounds, our community did not condone slavery, or the ownership of people. The community of Dulac gathered around Maka and healed his spirit, even as my parents healed his body.  In return, Maka and my parents exchanged much of the healing and ritual practice of Vodou. It is said that Vodou is a magic.  That it can do things that man cannot.  Maka often spoke of this magic, and of the power that it contained.  My parents assumed that this was the magic of healing, but Maka and I had communicated deep into the nights, he speaking, and me signing, sharing the darker and more mystical parts of Vodou that he dare not share with others.  I became his student, and together we blended my knowledge of local healing with his knowledge of the spiritual world.  Together we raised the gods and summoned the demons. We attempted to show my parents the magic of the spirits joining with us to heal, but they eschewed this as Sorciéry and false medicine.  They would have none of it in their hospital, and Maka and I practiced our arts in private, deep in the swamp where no one could see.

While my parents cared for the ill in their Dulac hospital, Maka and I would travel throughout the swamplands caring for those in need. We would pack a simple parcel of foods and medicines and drift through the glades and swamps in our pirogue, a flat-bottomed boat suited for traversing shallow water.  With Maka in the stern, shuttling the long wooden pole up out of the water, then planting it firmly in the mud and tea below, pushing us along the waterway, we would boat deep into the swamps searching out a rumored resident who was ill.  Despite no maps or reliable description beyond a cursory direction and distance, we generally found them alive, and were able to provide healing care, or a painless passing.

It was only these remote illnesses that allowed Maka and I to practice a true Vodou. Without a formal ounfò, our efforts to bring forth the spirits were crude and unreliable.  Our offerings were often too unworthy, bringing the Iwa’s wrath instead of healing, but we did the best with the resources at hand.  Maka would have captured a small crocodile, or opossum during our travels, and confined them to a cloth sack.  Once our patient was sedated, we would stoke our fire and begin our dance, calling for our Iwa.  During this ritual, Maka would slit the throat of the small sacrifice, offering the life and blood to Iwa in solemn respect.  If the dance and the offering were pleasing to our Iwa, they would come into us, providing knowledge and assistance in the preparation and application of medicinal treatment.  If our offerings did not please our Iwa, they would possess us and use us in the most horrific ways to show their displeasure.  We learned quickly to please our Iwa, and the result were many less bodies weighted down with rocks, left to sink to the bottom of the swamp.