More Surveys and Some Voodoo

Surveys are exhausting.  I wasn't expecting that my fairly simple, 20 question, verbal surveys would prove so mentally draining.  I think part of it is that doing just about anything here in Haiti feels more laborious for me due to several constant factors, including: the extreme heat and sun, not knowing the language, not having reliable electricity or internet, not having private transportation, having no anonymity whatsoever, and not knowing where anything is (like places where I would go to buy certain things).  But, conducting these surveys - even with the help of a skilled and smart translator - is even harder because on top of it all we are walking around in the heat and sun all day trying to find houses where we will initiate conversations with strangers, ask them personal questions, write down their answers, take a reading of their home's GPS coordinates, and ask them to bring us some of their treated water so we can test it, and depending on the type of test, record that result or take the sample with us and plan on returning the next day to relay the results.

To make matters more difficult, there were certain discrepancies that kept arising in the responses people were giving to several of my survey questions.  For example, my first question:  Where do you get the water you use for drinking?  This often produced answers like: from the canal and the pump.  However, later on in the survey when I would ask what they use to treat their drinking water, I'd get responses like:  "nothing, because we buy our water from the trucks."  Okay, so you get your drinking water from the canal, the pump, and the water trucks?  Then they'd answer "yes" and look at me like, "Duh! Why are you asking something so obvious?"  This type of thing happened a lot, and resulted in a lot more time spent going back over questions we'd already covered to include the newly uncovered information. 

 An "Always" brand water truck

Speaking of water trucks though, I must sadly report that while these trucks are a very common source for providing drinking water to people in these communities (which the people all think means it is treated), all the water samples I have tested have been positive for coliforms.  What a waste of the very little and hard earned money these families have.  But, I know that as depressing as it is to find out stuff like this, it's so important because now we know that the Gadyen Dlo workers should re-emphasize the need to treat all household water - even the expensive truck water.  

Ok, enough complaining - the best part of conducting these surveys is that I do get to go around and see real life going on in the communities, and get to see people's homes, gardens, yards, animals, and of course their darling kids.  Alin, being a school teacher is excellent with kids, and whenever we walk past groups of kids on their way home he always gets them laughing (I wonder if sometimes to my expense) and gets them to tell us something that they learned in school that day.

His comfort with talking to and engaging kids was one of the other reasons I was very happy he was our translator on Thursday last week.  Liz and I got to pilot a water, sanitation, and hygiene education program which we designed, at one of the schools in Raypool, one of our Gadyen Dlo communities.  That was one of the coolest things I've ever done, and I'll discuss the whole experience in much more detail in my next post.

One interesting area of Haitian culture which I haven't had much opportunity to learn about is Voodoo.  All I really have heard over the past month is "oh see over there?  That's a Voodoo temple."  And, as I mentioned, a few weeks ago I heard a Voodoo celebration going on first hand for several nights.  So, after Alin pointed out this building (below) and told me it used to be a Voodoo temple (but was now was just used as a home for a few families), I decided I'd ask him to tell me a little more.

As I understand it, in Voodoo, you communicate with spirits who are the ones that have the power to affect your or other's lives.  Some people actually are married to spirits.  Alin tells me this is why it is so important to get to know your girlfriend, and her family, for several years before you marry her - because you want to make sure she is not already married to a spirit.  If you do happen to marry someone who is married to a spirit it will mean "a lot of problems for you," because that spirit will obviously be jealous and pissed.  But, sometimes the people who are married to the spirits don't even know the spirit has married them for several years.  But, if you are married to a spirit, and a human, you could at least designate a room in your house for the spirit - you just need to make sure your human spouse never goes in there.  

I'm slightly unclear about the different levels of these spirits because it seems like some spirits are more powerful and more encompassing than others.  For example, the Voodoo celebration I was hearing from my bedroom would have been to honor a spirit who is serving all the people at that celebration, whereas a spirit wife or husband might only work for their spouse.  Similarly, there are also Voodoo priests, who are people that have an even closer relationship to spirits and you can hire them to get the spirits to do what you need.  

But again, I'm not sure why sometimes you can make a personal offering to a spirit, like leaving some food hanging in a tree, and sometimes you have to go to a priest to do it. 

At the Voodoo celebrations, sacrifices of goats or chickens are very common, and some of the meat will be buried, hung from a tree, or put out on a rock along some path where the spirit will easily find it.  The rest of the animal is then eaten by the people who are there celebrating.  The whole idea is that you've got to take care of these spirits so they stay in a good mood and want to keep helping you - and not the opposite.  Alin tells me it is definitely possible that some of the offerings we see hanging in trees (in coconut holders, or other purse like containers - I'll have to post a picture, I have seen a few since we had this talk and he explained it too me) are placed there because someone is mad at someone else and is asking their spirit to do something bad to them.  However, these offers could also be intended for a spirit who someone is wanting to do good for someone else, like heal them, for example.  

Now, I should probably put a little disclaimer out there and point out that Alin doesn't "believe" in Voodoo because he is Christian, and says "you can't be Christian and believe in anything except God."  But, he was raised by his mother who used to practice Voodoo until Jesus found his family when he was a young teen.  So, everything I've written here is just my understanding of it based on how he described it to me, so don't take any of this as fact unless you do your own research to back it up.

It's hard to see in this picture, but the part of the mural on the far right is of a man chained to a tree with knives stabbing into him in his thigh, stomach, and arm.  A lot of the paintings on this building had similarly morbid imagery, which was both fascinating and disturbing to me.  It actually made me a little uneasy to photograph it for some reason, so I took these pictures as quickly as I could and then walked away.