“Twon manti pa fon.”
The hole of lies isn’t deep
-Haitian proverb
It was a busy day of fet Kouzen when I met Dana Jackson. I was sitting in the temple of Manmi Maude Evans’ Boston temple. The chairs were draped in colorful plaids and denim fabrics; Kouzen loves his bright colors. I was washing a large kivet (enamelware basin) of fruit.
“Kouzen takes care of our stomachs,” Manbo Maude once said.
Dana sat down across from me. “Can I help?”
“Absolutely,” I said.
We washed apples and oranges and mangos while we talked. She was a petite Black lady with short hair. She had a polite Southern drawl.
“This is my first fet,” she said. “I’m going to kanzo in Haiti this year.”
I congratulated her and we talked about Haiti, some of the things to expect (not initiatory secrets, of course), and Vodou in general. She struck me as someone smart, humble and eager to learn. Those are excellent qualities in any spiritual seeker. In my nearly ten years as a manbo, I find these qualities are indicative of someone who will build a strong relationship with the lwa.
That was the first and only time I got to be with Dana.
In late July 2024, I was at home on day and noticed that our temple group chat was lit up with news of Dana’s sudden death in Haiti the day after she completed her nine days.
It then came to light that Dana had died five days before the text went out; we weren’t told about the death until five days after she died.
We in the U.S and elsewhere in the world were stunned. Why weren’t we informed of Dana’s death when it happened? She was our new sister; why weren’t we allowed to know so we could at least pray for her spirit?
The next several days were a mass of ongoing texts and we children of Sosyete Nago were begging for information: was Dana’s body back in the U.S? What happened when Dana’s family was notified?
It was claimed that Dana’s father had been notified immediately but he chose to disengage with the temple so he could focus on his grief.
Dana had a grown son, her only child. He went to the local news and soon, I saw a YouTube video of state news story of Dana’s death: complete with spooky music, “Vodou death curses”, etc.
In addition, a former member of the temple took Maude and her daughter’s cell phone numbers and had them published in the news.
Finally, a meeting was called for the elders of the temple; I was a part of this meeting. It took place over video as everyone was spread all over the country. I noted that Maude was not in the meeting leading the discussion. Her daughter Taleah said, “Manmi is deep in her grief and doesn’t want to be on camera.”
In the meeting, Taleah gave a little more of a timeline: Dana had died the night kanzo completed; she complained of feeling ill and was rushed to the hospital in Jacmel. We hadn’t been told about her death for five days because they needed to get a hold of her father and son. Taleah also said the celebrations for the lwa continued despite the death because “we’d already bought the animals and had to do magic; that work has to happen even if someone dies.”
This did not make sense to me. Manbo Maude had always said you can negotiate with your spirits; even if you have something scheduled and then things change, you can say to your spirits, “I’ve had an emergency and I can’t give you these things right now, but I can do this for you.” Spirits are close to humans and have their own emotions, and they understand humans are fallible and are sympathetic. It didn’t make sense that Manbo Maude hadn’t explained to the lwa that we’d lost a house sibling, and their work would have to be postponed, because we are grieving. The animals could maybe have been sacrificed in Dana’s honor and fed people.
Taleah kept insisting that since the animals were ready and clients had purchased work, the parties would have to go on or the lwa would be angry.
Again, this didn’t make sense to me: the lwa love their children and don’t want to hurt them. Yes, they get angry, but like I said above, you can talk with them and work it out and make up for the mistake.
Meanwhile the Sosyete’s reputation online was being destroyed by other Vodwizan and laypeople claiming, “Dana was killed by her own temple, they didn’t do the proper funeral ceremonies for her right away, the temple only wants money.”
Not too long after, the temple had another video meeting. Taleah was running this meeting again, saying that Maude was “deep in grief, she doesn’t want to be on camera but is sitting over there.”
What? The leader doesn’t want to be seen on camera? The President of the United States doesn’t hide off camera in the Oval Office bathroom when something bad happens: they get on camera to address the nation, provide physical comfort and resources, and even tour a disaster area and attend funerals for people who died.
When you’re a leader, you need to act bravely and put out your best effort as a human. Leaders are humans too, but the price of leadership is you have to be in private to act like a coward.
As an aside, Manbo Maude and her family were still in Haiti. Apparently flights back to the US were hard to come by due to unrest.
Once they came back, a meeting with the larger house membership was called on video. This time Maude was on camera.
-Healthcare in Haiti is scarce in people and resources, and the hospital in Jacmel had next to no supplies and one or two nurses and one doctor. Ernest said patients going to the hospital have to bring their own medicines, wound supplies, etc.
-Dana was finally hooked up to an EKG, which showed she was in ventricular tachycardia, which is a lethal arrhythmia, as in, your heart stops beating. This rhythm is shockable but the hospital had no shock paddles or defibrillator.
-The hospital was calling all over to find the one cardiologist in the south and find a way to get him to Jacmel
I really feel for Ernest; it is devastating as a medical professional to see a death in front of you and know it was because you didn’t have the simple resources to save life.
Maude cried during the meeting. “People keep saying I’m a murderer.”
We all reassured her; no, you’re not, Manmi.
And I was thinking: not much mentioned of Dana.
Also, why would the lwa allow something like this to happen to their new spiritual child?
What else were we being lied to?
I thought about the 15 years I’d had Manbo Maude as a spiritual mother. I remembered the first leson she gave me, where she looked at me surprised and said, “You have a lot of spirits!”
I remember speaking to Ogou for the first time, he in Maude’s head, and he looked at me and said, “This is my house and you landed here because I wanted you here. I love you very much and when I say yes, I mean yes all the way.”
And he has. I’ve made Ogou and other spirits angry several times. When I was sincerely contrite, they forgave me and blessed me again. Was a spirit angry enough to kill Dana? It didn’t make sense.
Four years prior to all this, my father died after a brief awful battle of metastatic cancer. Earlier in the year I’d said something tone-deaf about a house brother online, and Maude got very angry with me (for the record, I later apologized to my brother and we were cool again). I’d told my siblings about my dad entering hospice. I’d called Manbo a few times leaving messages, asking for a call back or text, anything to help me, her spiritual daughter.
She finally called me back, yelling at me on the phone about what happened with my brother, saying “You almost went too far.”
I was sobbing and driving my car. “Manmi, I’m sorry, I apologized, but my dad’s cancer is terminal. I need you.”
“Yes, I heard that” she snapped at me, and told me she couldn’t talk to me for awhile, and ended the call.
Dad had met Maude a couple of times, and even took a Vodou class with her. Watching my Taurus accountant Green Beret father attempt to do a vire (ritual turn) was one of the most awkwardly funny moments of my life.
So Maude knew him, and knew how much I loved him, how devastating his illness was to the many people who loved him. I needed a mother. I needed Maude.
And she ignored me until the day Dad died. That night, in a daze, I posted to the temple group chat the news; my siblings quickly came back with their support and condolences.
A little while later, Maude called me. I was stunned to see her caller ID.
“I heard your voice message on the chat and I thought, oh no, she is trying to be strong. And I knew I had to call you.”
No apology, no acknowledging the silence between us that she made the decision to break. Just ignoring the issue and carrying on like nothing had happened.
Of course, in that moment a few hours after preparing my father’s dead body, I was unable to have a deep discussion about the issue. I let it go.
As time went on, I felt the hurt and resentment down in my soul. I thought so many times about asking to sit with Maude and work things out, but I was terrified that if I asked to talk about it she would just get angry again and shun me again, or kick me out of the house. And then I’d no longer be a manbo because Vodou is about community. No community, no priesthood.
So I kept trying desperately to feel her love for me.
Finally, Maude and Taleah called another house meeting to say the sosyete was going to change things, that people’s grievances would be promptly addressed (I was not the only one who’d experienced this behavior from Maude). Then they said they’d be calling each member over the next week and ask them if they still wanted to be part of the house.
Translation: if you’re willing to obey any new rules, you’re allowed to stay. Make any challenge and out you go.
I thought a lot about what to say. The call came and it was Maude and one of my sisters on the line. Maude asked me the question: stay or go.
“I’d like to stay,” I said, “but I hold a lot of resentment about how you acted when Dad died, and I need to work it out with you.”
“I can’t do that now!” Maude said. ‘I will need more time.”
Inside me I was raging. We’d had four years to talk about it and you never thought you were wrong enough to approach me. As my elder I have to be the one to approach the parent.
“OK, Manmi. You can look at your schedule and call me when you have a good time. I can come to your house. I’ll talk to you later.”
I hung up the phone.
Was I too abrupt? I don’t know, maybe. But I was scared that if Id stayed on the call any longer I’d just blow up in anger and I’d lose any chance of reconciliation.
One week later, on a Wednesday night, I was driving home around 7pm from a music lesson; it was dark out, and Massachusetts is a handsfree phone state. The phone rang, and I saw Maude’s caller ID.
I didn’t want to have any deep discussion while I was weaving my way through traffic, so I thought I’ll let her leave a message and I can call her if I’m not home too late.”
I got to my complex and the phone rang again, it was Maude. I thought she might leave another voicemail, but nothing came. I’m more of a morning person so I thought I’d try her in the morning.
Next morning, after I did my usual morning prayers and picked up my phone and noticed that I’d been removed from the sosyete group chat by Taleah.
Hmmm.
At that moment another brother texted me saying call me tonight; I said sure, but I just noticed I was taken off the group chat.
“That’s why I want to talk to you.”
That night, we talked a long time and he showed me part of the chat where Maude told the group that she’d made all the calls and those who were staying would “move the temple in a more concise manner.”
Concise. So I was extra, a piece that was too much and clipped away like scissors pruning a bush.
I felt numb. I felt like a wound with a festering infection that had burst to release all the nastiness. It needed to come out, but I felt lost; loss of the spiritual mother who brought me to the feet of the lwa.
I recently got the chance to speak to Papa Ogou in possession: he greeted me happily, stroking my hair and face. “My beautiful wife.”
I asked him why did Dana die? Why is the sosyete dumping members and people are destroying our reputation? Why did you put me in a house where the leader started off kind and helpful and wound up paranoid and worried more about her personal reputation?
He looked at me sadly. “Maude changed.”
We talked a long time and I found out to my shock that Maude had deliberately sabotaged work I’d done with her with Kouzen, years before. I hadn’t gotten any results from the work, which was odd because Kouzen has always worked so hard for me. And all Maude could say was “be patient, the lwa do things in their own time.” Meanwhile, she was working directly against me getting what I’d asked for.
If you’d told me five years ago that a)I would no longer have a relationship with Maude and b)she deliberately sabotaged work I’d paid her to do because she didn’t want me to succeed, I would have vehemently denied that Maude could do anything that horrible.
But now, sitting in front of the first lwa I ever spoke to, my spiritual husband, I sadly knew I wasn’t surprised at the revelation. It just confirmed; Manbo Maude started out years ago as a sincere servant of the lwa and a loving teacher. But now, she was more concerned about her own reputation over serving and humbling herself before those same spirits.
In the several months since then, a lot has changed: a move to Atlanta, the presidential election (*spits, crosses herself*), and through it all the very sad knowledge that I was cut off from a community and all because I wanted to discuss a difficult issue.
There have been other things that came out: how Maude said to people that kanzo and ceremonies had to go on because the house in Haiti depended on the money we Americans spent there; no kanzo or ceremonies, no money for the people living there. We were funding their lives.
Hearing how Dana’s funeral rites had not been completed, and elders from other temples being horrified that the sosyete wasn’t following the traditional rites.
This has all been a horrible situation and I know I needed to say my peace about Dana’s sad death, but I couldn’t think about what to say. I don’t know the exact medical reason of Dana’s death ; she did have some chronic health problems, but was managing them as best as I saw. We may never know exactly what happened to lead to Dana’s death, but I needed to tell this story as I experienced it. I can only speak to my own viewpoint.
I’m in contact with only a few of my siblings; we are talking and helping each other heal.
A wise woman once told me: “Things don’t happen to you, they happen FOR you.” I’m still figuring out what losing Sosyete Nago will bring in terms of blessings to me. But I do know this: Manbo Maude guided me to the lwa, and facilitated the initiation through lots of hard work, but it was God and the lwa who made me a manbo. In any religious tradition, God has to be invoked and put their power into the person. Nothing ultimately can happen without God being involved.
I don’t wish Manbo Maude ill will. I’m sad that we couldn’t make things right between us, but I also think that it’s better that I know where I stood with her: not unconditional love, but brooding and shunning when her feelings were hurt. In other words, not the actions of a good leader or loving mother.
May God, the ancestors, and the spirits enlighten and uplift all sentient beings. Ayibobo.
