It's that VooDoo that You Do

Based on the following comments from Haiti's supreme master of voodoo, it looks as though the country has little chance of overcoming its deep and troubling problems. The misery, poverty, backwardness and despair will remain the defining characteristics of this nation.

Haiti earthquake: voodoo high priest claims aid monopolised by Christians

Haiti's voodoo high priest has claimed believers have been discriminated against by evangelical Christians who are monopolising aid sent to the earthquake-stricken country.

By Nick Allen in Port-au-Prince
Published: 01 Feb 2010

Max Beauvoir, Haiti's "supreme master" of voodoo, alleged his faith's opponents had deliberately prevented much-needed help from reaching followers of the religion, which blends the traditional beliefs of West African slaves with Roman Catholicism.

"The evangelicals are in control and they take everything for themselves," he claimed. "They have the advantage that they control the airport where everything is stuck. They take everything they get to their own people and that's a shame.

"Everyone is suffering the same and has the same needs. We are not asking for anything more than anyone else. We're just asking for it to be fair."

Mr Beauvoir, 75, a Sorbonne-educated biochemist, spoke as a first convoy of aid arrived at his home in Mariani, a town just outside Port-au-Prince. It contained 400 sacks of rice from the World Food Programme and was mobbed by hundreds of hungry voodoo believers.

"It is the first delivery and it took a couple of weeks fight to get that for the voodoo people," said Mr Beauvoir.

At the weekend hundreds of voodoo houngans, or priests, gathered in the northern town of Gonaives to plan how to react to the earthquake that left an estimated 200,000 people dead on Jan 12.

Following the earthquake the US television evangelist Pat Roberston said Haiti made a "pact with the devil" 200 years ago when it defeated French colonists.

"I don't know much about him and I don't think I'm losing much," said Mr Beauvoir. "Voodoo as been discriminated against for 200 years.

"It was developed by our ancestors, it is a way of life. To ask us to stop would be like asking an American to stop heating hamburgers."

He also rejected the idea that voodoo consists of human sacrifices and sticking pins in dolls.

"That's Hollywood voodoo," he said. "No-one from Hollywood has ever sent an anthropologist to study voodoo in Haiti."

In Haitian voodoo, God is supreme and is not involved in human affairs.

Believers instead worship hundreds of spirits called lwa. Other beliefs include that trees have spirits.

As she waited for rice from the WFP Monique Henri, 36 wore a cross round her neck but she also believes in voodoo. She said she had an image of Ogu Feri , the voodoo god of metal and fire, at her home .

"The earthquake happened because people were sinners so God was angry, because people did wrong," she said..

Clavarus Filisca, 72, a houngan, invokes the spirit of Jambe Male to heal people of fevers, headaches and other maladies. "Voodoo is the most important religion. It's natural, it's everywhere," he said.

Mr Beauvoir rejected the suggestion that the earthquake was an act of God. He says it was a natural event but many voodoo followers still believe it was a punishment.

Christians have also been inundating radio stations asking anyone who has committed a crime to confess, thereby saving the nation from future disasters.

Inspiration, an evangelical station, said 11,000 people had rung up to pledge themselves to God since the earthquake.

Missionaries equating voodoo with devil worship have long tried to convert the population of Haiti but the religion, a mixture of Christianity and animism, remains ingrained. Like Christianity it has one God but incorporates pagan elements such as spell casting and calling spirits.

Mr Beauvoir’s grand house, the Peristyle de Mariani, is a voodoo temple where followers dance around a totem pole in the grounds to the sound of drums. Bonfires are lighted to attract spirits and the blood of animals, including goats and chickens, is drained and used to heal the sick.

However, since the earthquake, he has halted all ceremonies. “This is a big shock for people to absorb,” he said. Voodoo ceremonies are still going on in the countryside.

The elaborate ceremonies include secret languages, people dancing after being possessed by spirits and talismans including dried animal heads.

In rural areas there are said to be people who practice the darker side of voodoo, summoning evil spirits. However, practitioners argue that voodoo is a force for good.

Kompe Filo, one of the most popular TV and radio personalities in Haiti, and a vocal believer, said voodoo predicted the earthquake six months ago.

He said: “God is angry against humanity, not just Haiti but all humanity. This is a message that man must change, and reconnect with the natural world around him.

“We have a lot of beliefs modern people should believe in. For example we believe that trees have spirits which we should not harm otherwise we will all suffer.”

Haiti -- Where Prayer Replaces Preparation

150,000 Haiti quake victims buried, gov't says

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – The truckers filling Haiti's mass graves with bodies reported ever higher numbers: More than 150,000 quake victims have been buried by the government, an official said Sunday.

That doesn't count those still under the debris, carried off by relatives or killed in the outlying quake zone.

"Nobody knows how many bodies are buried in the rubble — 200,000? 300,000? Who knows the overall death toll?" said the official, Communications Minister Marie-Laurence Jocelyn Lassegue.

The hapless government has no basis for determining the number of people killed by the earthquake. Worse, the government seems to lack the understanding of how Haiti's own lack of safety standards contribued to the massive death toll.

When an earthquake of slightly higher magnitude hit northern California in 1989 -- postponing the World Series -- less than 70 people were killed. Wny? American building codes. The building codes mandated safety standards that made the difference.

Dealing with the living, meanwhile, a global army of aid workers was getting more food into people's hands, but acknowledged falling short. "We wish we could do more, quicker," said U.N. World Food Program chief Josette Sheeran, visiting Port-au-Prince.

In the Cite Soleil slum, U.S. soldiers and Brazilian U.N. peacekeeping troops distributed food. Lunie Marcelin, 57, said the handouts will help her and six grown children "but it is not enough. We need more."

Where is the help promised by the long list of grandstanding nations? Only a handful have actually delivered.

International experts searched for sites to erect tent cities for quake refugees on the capital's outskirts, but such short-term solutions were still weeks away, said the International Organization for Migration, an intergovernmental agency.

"We also need tents. There is a shortage of tents," said Vincent Houver, the Geneva-based agency's chief of mission in Haiti. Their Port-au-Prince warehouse has 10,000 family-size tents, but some 100,000 are needed, he said. The organization has appealed for $30 million for that and other needs, and has received two-thirds of that so far.

Haiti is about to become the tent capital of the world. Given its well demonstrated inability to develop housing, Haiti will become a nation with a permanent set of tent-dwellers. Undoubtedly people moving into tents will remain in them until they are nothing but tatters.

One who wouldn't die in Port-au-Prince was Wismond Exantus, who was extricated from the rubble Saturday. He spoke with the AP from his cot in a French field hospital on Sunday, saying the first thing he wanted to do was find a church to give thanks.

He spent the 11 days buried in the ruins of a hotel grocery store praying, reciting psalms and sleeping, he said. "I wasn't afraid because I knew they were searching and would come for me," he said.

It seems Haitians believe prayer is behind rescue missions conducted by humans. It would add to Wismond Exantus's story if we knew who had rescued him.

With such rescues now increasingly unlikely, Haiti's government has declared an end to search operations for the living, shifting the focus more than ever to caring for the thousands surviving in squalid, makeshift camps.

The World Food Program had delivered about 2 million meals to the needy on Friday, up from 1.2 million on Thursday, Sheeran said. But she acknowledged that much more was needed.

"This is the most complex operation WFP has ever launched," she said. "Food distribution is very difficult," said Dr. Henry Ariel of the Haitian Health Ministry. "The food doesn't reach up to now everyone."

The scene Sunday at Cite Soleil, the capital's largest and most notorious slum, showed the need.

Thousands of men, women and children lined up and waited peacefully for their turn as the American and Brazilian troops handed out aid — the Americans gave ready-to-eat meals, high-energy biscuits and bottled water, the Brazilians passed out small bags holding uncooked beans, salt, sugar and sardines, as well as water.

Americans and Brazilians to the rescue. Any other nations heard from?

The need for medical care, especially surgery, postoperative care and drugs, still overwhelmed the help available, aid agencies reported. In the isolated southern port city of Jacmel alone, about 100 patients needed surgery as of Friday, the U.N. reported. Medical personnel were there, but not the necessary surgery supplies.

In Port-au-Prince, meanwhile, the aid group Doctors Without Borders said its inflatable hospital — six large inflatable tents flown in from France — was preparing for its first operations.

At the Choscal hospital in Cite Soleil, the operating room has been busy with obstetric cases and some machete and gunshot wounds, Doctors Without Borders said, as looting and violence sputtered on among the ruins. The numbers of young men scavenging for goods seemed lower, however, since most shops were already entirely cleaned out.

Obstetric cases? Babies? Machete and gunshot wounds? None a result of the earthquake. More evidence of a country in a state of anarchy. Is there any chance Haiti will recover from this catastrophe? Yes, -- IF -- the US and/or the UN takes control of the country and forces the changes needed to create a nation with a rising standard of living. But it will take FORCE. Not hand-holding or sensitivity. If prosperity is to arrive, then Haiti's traditions have to go. A new national mindset has to arrive. Otherwise, Haitians will live in misery until the next catastrophe makes life even worse.

The world's nations have pledged some $1 billion in emergency aid to Haiti. Organizers of Friday night's "Hope for Haiti Now" international telethon reported the event raised $57 million, with more pledges from ordinary people still coming in.

Water, the Ultimate Resource

What is the true threat facing humanity? Not Global Warming. Not Overpopulation. Not Nuclear Winter. Not AIDS. The real threat is having too little clean water. There's plenty of water. Far more than humans will ever need. But most of it is undrinkable.

Fortunately, supplies of drinkable water are easily increased. Modern nations are experts when it comes to cleaning water. And Nature is a big help. But people live virtually everywhere on the globe and some of those places have limited supplies of drinkable water.

We can supply water anywhere. But unless a country has a government that operates for the benefit of the people, existing supplies are likely to fall short. As they do in Haiti, most of Africa and in many nations around the world.

As a result, some pundits predict trouble tied to water is ahead.

Water Shortage May Bring Wars, Epidemics, Famine:

Jan. 23 -- Son of a shipwright and architect, James Watt started tinkering with instruments as a teenager.

In 1763 he was asked to repair a model of the Newcomen engine at the University of Glasgow and came up with the modern steam engine.

Watt’s invention jump-started the industrial revolution, as the latent power of water was exploited for industry, agriculture, trade, travel, communication and war. It also led to the growth of great cities, as water for drinking, cooking and sanitation became readily available.

Now the world is facing a crisis: As fresh water becomes increasingly scarce and the human population continues to expand, we will likely see war, failed states, famine, genocide, epidemics and mass migrations.

I spoke with Steven Solomon, author of “Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization” (Harper), on the following topics:

1. More Precious Than Oil

2. Hydraulic Civilizations

3. Seminal Invention

4. China’s Achilles’ Heel

5. America’s Water Wealth

Abject water poverty is rampant in Haiti. Nearly half of all Haitians are among the world’s 1 billion without satisfactory access to clean drinking water; over two-thirds are counted in the 2.6 billion without adequate sanitation.

Only one-fourth of city dwellers have plumbing connections, and service is unreliable. Each day means foraging for enough water for drinking, cooking, and cleaning from water tanks, street vendors, and wells, by illegally tapping water mains, and as a last resort, drawing from unclean streams and ditches. Water is the main source of Haiti’s terrible illness and mortality rates — average life expectancy is only 53.

Danny Glover blames Haitian Earthquake on Copenhagen

When a country has a government that has failed to function for 200 years, it should surprise no one that country with a useless government is unprepared for a national emergency.

The impact of the earthquake was many times worse than the same quake in the US because Haiti has no building codes. No standards for safety. Flimsy buildings go up, and flimsy buildings fall down.

Nevertheless, Danny Glover thinks the trouble began in Copenhagen. Yikes.

As more reports come in, things continue to worsen.

Obama admin allows Haitians in USA illegally to remain...

Advocates pushing to relocate Haitian children to America...

Haiti's Streets Called 'Tinderbox' as Hunger, Thirst and Anger Grows...

HAITIAN GOVT SAYS 40,000 BURIED, ANOTHER 100,000 THOUGHT DEAD...

Despair, Panic Set in as Food, Water and Medical Supplies are Delayed...

UN to launch Haiti emergency appeal for $550M...

ANARCHY: WHO'S RUNNING COUNTRY??

U.S. military mobilizes thousands...

War Zone: Gangs do battle in streets with machetes over food...

WIRE: Angry Haitians block roads with corpses...

HORROR: Corpses impede traffic, pyres of burning tires incinerate cadavers...

Survivors Face Diarrhea, Malaria Outbreaks Amid Lack of Clean Water...

Actor Danny Glover Says Quake 'Response' For Screwing Up Climate Summit In Copenhagen...