Age of Voodoo by James Lovegrove Page B

Anyone who was believed to be an anti-Duvalier agitator, they and their entire family would be killed, utterly wiped out. Rape and extortion were commonplace. All this while Duvalier père et fils helped themselves to Haiti’s sovereign wealth, lining their pockets and becoming obscenely rich while honest citizens scrabbled to make a living and went hungry.”
    “Haiti’s still a shitbox,” Wilberforce opined, “only now it’s at least a democratic shitbox.”
    “Yes, thank you for that, cuz,” said Albertine tartly. “The land of our ancestors, dismissed in a single sentence.”
    “And the earthquake a couple of years back?” Wilberforce added. “That was Mother Nature commenting on the place. She was trying to finish the job Papa Doc started.”
    “You’re sick.”
    “Just saying.”
    “The Tontons Macoutes,” Albertine resumed, glowering at her cousin, “sowed terror among the population not only by their actions but by their appearance. They wore denim like Azaka, the loa of agriculture, and used machetes like Ogun, the loa of iron and war. Even their name was designed to prey on people’s fears. Tonton Macoute is a bogeyman from Haitian folklore who kidnaps children and carries them off in a sack. Essentially, they were a perversion of vodou beliefs, just as Papa Doc himself was, with his black undertaker’s suit, hat and heavy sunglasses.”
    “I don’t get it,” said Lex.
    “Papa Doc styled himself after Baron Samedi, the loa of death and cemeteries. His look said, ‘I have power over life and death, and don’t you forget it.’ Although actual practitioners of vodou were not held in high regard by him and his bullyboys.”
    “Because they might point out that he wasn’t all he claimed to be.”
    “Just so. To them, he was a blasphemer. The braver ones said as much, not that it helped. The Tontons Macoutes dealt with them the same way they dealt with all troublemakers. When Papa Doc died in ’seventy-one and Baby Doc took over, things got even worse. More chaotic. Baby Doc didn’t have his father’s charisma or ruthlessness. He fell out with the Tontons Macoutes and was finally forced into exile in ’eighty-six, by which time Haiti was all but ruined. Most of the middle classes and the wealth creators had quit the country long beforehand—the Haitian Diaspora, which took them to places like Cuba, the Dominican Republic, the United States. My grandparents were among them. They came to Manzanilla with my mother and her little sister, Wilberforce’s mother, to seek a better life, but not only for that reason. Also to escape execution. Specifically the execution of my mother.”
    “Why?”
    “Because she, though only in her teens, was showing signs of becoming a powerful vodou adept. And, being in her teens, she was naturally outspoken and rebellious. The two things in Haiti during those years were not a good combination. Things got hot for my family. My grandparents bought passage on a little fishing boat, leaving everything they had behind, and made their way here to begin again. My mother, Hélène, kept up her vodou training and studies, and within a decade had become a mambo to be reckoned with. Truly one of the greats.”
    “A big woman in every way,” said Wilberforce. He whistled and shook his head. “You should see her, Lex. A metre and a half tall and about a hundred kilos. She’s like a ball, almost perfectly round.”
    “Hey, that’s my mama you’re insulting,” said Albertine.
    “Who’s insulting? She is big. You can’t deny it. You could shove Aunt Hélène down a hill and she wouldn’t stop rolling ’til she reached the sea.”
    “Do you want her to put a wanga on you, Wilberforce?” Albertine said. “I can ask her to. A quick phone call is all it’ll take. Steal a washcloth from your house, tie seven knots in it, drop it in a river, and you won’t be able to get hard again, not until you beg her forgiveness. How about that, eh? Your limp little zozo