STORY: ++Haiti: Pilgrimage
LENGTH: 3:45
RESTRICTIONS:

TYPE:
SOURCE: APTN
DATELINE: Port-au-Prince – July 16 2003

SHOTLIST:

1. Wide vehicle and pilgrims walking into Ville Bonheur and Saut d’Eau, Haiti

2. Wide pilgrims walking on path toward Ville Bonheur

3. Wide pilgrims cross a river near Saut d’Eau waterfalls

4. Wide believers praying in Ville Bonheur church

5. Close-up statue of Our Lady of Mount Carmel

6. SOUNDBITE (Haitian Creole) Unidentified pilgrim: “Today I am at your feet. I brought you oil. I brought you candles. I brought you money. To see if you can find an answer for me!”

7. Close-up pilgrim praying with candle

8. Medium stand with images of Our Lady of Mount Carmel portraits for sale

9. Wide zoom out from two waterfalls at Saut d’Eau with pilgrims praying and bathing

10. SOUNDBITE (Haitian Creole) Estime Augustin, pilgrim from Miami, Florida: “Vodou, it walks hand in hand with the Catholic religion, because when you go to a Catholic church, the images you see, they have a Vodou spirit behind them. So, if you are a Vodou believer, if you are really Haitian, you have an extra strength.”

11. Medium pull out of Augustin bathing with herbs under waterfall

12. SOUNDBITE (Haitian Creole) Estime Augustin, pilgrim from Miami, Florida: “Because you have a spirit with you. You don’t see the spirit? Just like in the US, money has ‘In God we trust’ on it, which means that you believe in God, we believe in God, too. Without God, nothing can happen, you understand? God is in front, but the spirits are behind.”

13. Medium two men in falls

14. Close-up possessed man in pool

15. Wide people in falls

16. Medium possessed woman holding a calabash and dancing on a rock in the falls

17. Wide men and women praying to falls as people bathe under them

18. Medium two possessed women in the falls

19. SOUNDBITE (English) Regina Katia Pierre, 16, from Sunrise, Florida: “People say, people have different ways to think about this. People have like the Vodou… or, like they say they pray here, take a shower with, um, soap and throw it and God will, how you say? wash your soul, every little bad thing you did, like that.”

20. Wide people dancing and singing under falls

21. Wide pilgrims putting on Vodou clothing honoring the spirit Erzuli Dantor after bathing

22. Close-up pilgrim putting on make-up

23. Close-up pilgrim in Vodou clothing

24. Wide houngan (Vodou priest) Lesly Egalite and his followers sing around a bull to be sacrificed

25. Medium Egalite putting talcum powder on bull. [Egalite is singing “We’re going to powder the cock.”]

26. SOUNDBITE (Haitian Creole) Lesly Egalite, houngan from Cite Soleil: “The Saut d’Eau festival is a dream for us, because when July 16 is over, we feel like we need another July 16 to come right away so we come and pray. Because you might be sick and it might be serious. You come and make a demand, and you get what you need. In the same way, you might be out of work. You come and make a demand, and your demand is answered. She is a saint who works with Vodou priests and priestesses. That’s why you have to pay your debt to her afterwards. Because you know that when you make a demand, you have to offer something, too.”

27. Medium, Egalite reading from the Bible over the bull

28. Close-up, Egalite’s hands with candle and Bible

29. Wide revelers dancing in a river with a street band.

STORYLINE:

Every year tens of thousands of Haitians come from all over the country and around the world to celebrate the double Catholic and Vodou holy days of Saut d’Eau (Waterfall) and Our Lady of Mont Carmel in tiny Ville Bonheur (Happiness Village) 60 miles north of the capital in the center of Haiti.

Despite the degradation of the Haitian economy and continued impoverishment of most of the population – many of whom survive on less than one dollar a day – thousands of pilgrims make the grueling four-hour journey from the capital or other parts of the country on the back of pick-up trucks over bumpy roads which were once paved, paying the equivalent of a week’s earnings for the ride.

The double holiday – celebrated beginning July 14 and culminating on July 16, Our Lady of Mount Carmel’s feast day according to the Catholic church – is one of the most important pilgrimages in Haiti. Also a celebration of the Vodou spirit Erzuli Dantor, it is attended by people who make demands as well as offerings to pay their debts as well as by fun-seekers who dance, eat and drink during the three days of festivities.

Like many other Catholic and Vodou holy days, Haitians see Saut d’Eau/Mount Carmel as a chance to improve their lots, and they fervently believe that if they come very year, observe the rituals and make the right offerings, their requests will be answered.

It would be a mistake to consider a pilgrim Catholic OR Vodou. While Catholic priests and evangelical Protestants feel otherwise, many Haitians do not see a dichotomy or contradiction between their Vodou beliefs and Catholicism. They see the two religions as linked and practice both. Believers in one God, they also believe the supreme being has numerous spirit assistants, like go-betweens between God and humans.

Thus for many, Vodou is the true religion. The Vodou spirits are behind the Virgin Mary and the saints. Others, who consider themselves Catholic, say they reject Vodou but still go to the Saut d’Eau waterfalls for the ritual purifying bath. While some have called this syncretism, others see it as an example of a survival strategy Vodouists adapted during centuries or repression.

For the Catholic part of the holiday, pilgrims flock to the town church and pray to the statue of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, who Catholics say appeared on a palm tree in the region in 1847. When people began to worship the palm tree in Ville Bonheur, saying it cured illnesses, pilgrims came from all over the country.

Hoping to end what he considered blasphemy, a French Catholic priest cut the tree down, but worshippers still came. While the church couldn’t do anything to stop the parallel Vodou woship of Erzuli Dantor, eventually the hierarchy bowed to the inevitable, erected a cross and built a church to honor Our Lady of Mount Carmel, perhaps hoping to recuperate believers.

Today, swooning and crying, clutching photos of family members or passports, lighting candles, pilgrims ask for money, a job, a visa… the same things being asked of Erzuli Dantor at the nearby waterfalls. As “payment,” they make offerings at the church or to the beggars who come from around the country, hoping to benefit from the hand-outs.

The Vodou part of the holiday takes place mostly by the Saut d’Eau waterfalls, where Vodou pilgrims come to purify themselves, get rid of the year’s bad luck and to make demands of Erzuli Dantor, a water spirit.

In a calabash, they carry purifying herbs, soap and perfume up to the falls to bathe in the holy waters. When they are done, they throw the soap and calabash and last year’s clothes away as a way to throw away the year’s bad luck.

While in the falls, many believers become possessed by the spirit of Erzuli Dantor, who is also portrayed as – or has “in front” – Our Lady of Mount Carmel or the Black Madonna. Some believers are also possessed by Ogou, a war spirit, who is also portrayed as Saint Jack.

After bathing, many pilgrims dress elaborately in Erzuli Dantor’s colors – especially blue and red – and make other offerings. As in the church, many light candles. Some kill goats or a cow and distribute the meat to the poor as a way of “paying” for what they have requested.

The Vodou religion developed amongst African slaves in secret, in the French colony of Saint Domingue during the 17^th and 18^th centuries. Heavily based on the Dahomey religion of Vodun still practiced today in Benin, the origin of hundreds of thousands of African slaves, it continued to evolve after Haiti’s slave revolt and independence in 1804.

Vodou has many similarities to Brazil’s Candomble and Puerto Rico’s Santeria religions.

Vodou and its practictioners were persecuted for hundreds of years, first by the slave-holders, then by Haiti’s elite and the Catholic church and also by the US forces during the 1915-1934 occupation of the island nation. That is one reason many Vodou celebrations and spirits have Christian “doubles.”

After hundreds of years of insults, persecution and existence in the shadows, this year, on the eve of the country’s 200^th anniversary, Vodou became an official religion when the government issued a decree giving it the same status as Catholicism and Protestantism.