4 April, 2010 — HLLN
Recommended HLLN Link: Ezili Dant’s Re-memberment for the quake victims and HLLN Delegation mobilizing Haiti-led Relief/Rebuilding – bit.ly/cd8gOI
In this post
– After Haiti refugee detainment, Obama must get control of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement | Albor Ruiz – Ny Local | April 4th 2010 bit.ly/ahlSKo
– Giving Up the Search for Haiti’s Last Lost American By Jessica Desvarieux / Port-au-Prince Tuesday, Mar. 30, 2010 | New York Times bit.ly/95ckRq
– Bohoun – Vodun Ceremony to expedite soul of those lost back to the primordial waters (Anba Dlo)
Bohoun – A Vodouist observance – a release /Kase kanari Vodouist ceremony – Kase Kanari – The 40th-day-after-death ritual that prayfully releases the souls of lives lost back to the Vodouist place of origin, back to Anba Dlo – back to the sacred primordial waters, back into the cosmic Ancestors’ hands and keeping.
After Haiti refugee detainment, Obama must get control of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement | Albor Ruiz – Ny Local | April 4th 2010 bit.ly/ahlSKo
Is it incompetence or callousness? Stupidity or just plain old racism?
It’s not easy to fathom what is behind the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency’s embarrassing trajectory of abuse that was splashed across the front pages of the news last week.
As if the revelations of cruel treatment of mentally ill detainees and a deportation “quota” policy that instructed ICE agents to go after “easy targets” – undocumented workers – instead of focusing on criminals and security threats had not been enough, last Thursday The New York Times published a new report that bordered on the surreal.
Three dozen Haitians rescued after the killer earthquake by U.S. forces and brought to Florida believing they would get safety and medical treatment were immediately handcuffed upon arrival and thrown into the Broward County Transitional Center, a privately operated jail in Pompano Beach, the newspaper reported.
What makes this incident so outrageous is that it involves people who lost everything in the Jan. 12 earthquake, including parents, children and friends, and who in some cases had been themselves rescued from under the ruins of Port-au-Prince.
Following the quake, which claimed an estimated 220,000 lives, many survivors sought aid at the airport and in the confusion the 36 Haitians were ushered onto planes by U.S. military personnel, the newspaper reported.
Brought to Florida in U.S. planes by U.S. Marines, they were not received with compassion and human solidarity. Instead, as soon as they landed they were imprisoned to await deportation for – listen to this – lacking visas.
In a happy ending of sorts, after languishing for more than two months in ICE jails, the Haitian earthquake survivors last Thursday were temporarily released – coincidentally, the same day their story was made public. It’s unclear whether they will be allowed to remain in the U.S.
One is left to wonder what would have been their fate without media coverage.
“Rather than being welcomed in the U. S. of A, and getting the refuge that they expected, they were detained for two months here at the Broward facility,” said Cheryl Little, executive director of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center.
Little noted that most of the Haitian detainees have family in the U.S. who are able to support them.
“We were just scratching our heads, honestly. We knew they couldn’t be deported under the new government policy, they didn’t have criminal backgrounds, and yet they were being detained with our tax dollars, American tax dollars.”
Incompetence or callousness? Stupidity or racism? It’s hard to tell.
What is absolutely certain is that the Obama administration cannot pretend to call on other nations to respect human rights while at the same time tolerating the blatant disregard by its own federal immigration agency.
To be taken seriously, the administration must act quickly and drastically to rein in ICE’s cowboy mentality and force the agency to march in step with President Obama’s stated priorities.
“When communities are terrorized by ICE immigration raids, when nursing mothers are torn from their babies, when children come home from school to find their parents missing, when people are detained without access to legal counsel, when all that is happening, the system just isn’t working, and we need to change it,” candidate Obama said with passion and conviction during his presidential run.
President Obama must not be allowed to forget his own words.
Giving Up the Search for Haiti’s Last Lost American By Jessica Desvarieux / Port-au-Prince Tuesday, Mar. 30, 2010 | New York Times
(Photo: Lonez Annoule searches for his 6-year-old daughter Lodz in Haiti bit.ly/95ckRq )
Lonez Annoule’s search for his 6-year-old daughter Lodz began minutes after the 7.0-magnitude earthquake in Haiti. He was about to prepare to send the little girl, an American citizen, back home to Miami when catastrophe struck. Annoule was on his way back from his trip to sell used clothing in the southwestern city of Petit-Gove. His bus came to a halt because piles of dead bodies were blocking the road. “When I saw those bodies, I only thought of one thing my daughter,” says Annoule, 37. “I walked all night, nonstop, from 5:30 in the evening to 10 a.m., to reach her.”
Annoule covered about 35 miles in the darkness, with long spreads of silence and bursts of cries for help. As he approached his sister-in-law’s house in the Port-au-Prince district of Carrefour Feuilles, each block no longer resembled what he remembered. And the four-story apartment building where he had left his daughter was flattened. “When I got to the house, I saw my sister-in law with her arms stretched out, and I knew,” says Annoule, fixing his eyes on the ground. (See TIME’s coverage of the earthquake in Haiti. bit.ly/dkYQp8)
He hired neighborhood men to pull concrete blocks with their bare hands, looking for any sign of Lodz. They worked for two straight weeks. The search for the little girl was then turned over to the U.S. military’s mortuary affairs, a unit that began looking for the remains of American victims of the quake in the beginning of March. The team has since recovered the remains of 52 Americans, but not Lodz’s. This week, about 2? months after the quake, it gave up. (See pictures of the destruction in Port-au-Prince.)
Michael Looney, the head of the mortuary-affairs investigative unit in Haiti, says the site has become too dangerous to continue excavation and poses increasing risk to his crew and to fragile homes in the surrounding area. His team is now returning to the U.S. “The success was so great,” says Looney of the bodies they recovered. At one of the major recovery sites, the Hotel Montana, in the upper-class area of Ptionville, Looney’s team recovered the remains of 17 Americans, including students from Lynn University.
Recovery after two months of decomposition means many of the cadavers were skeletal, requiring tests to ensure correct identification. “The identification really starts on the scene,” says David Hunt, 40, commander of Haiti DMORT (Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team). “We had anthropologists, pathologists and DNA testing all on hand.” Bodies were also retrieved with the assistance of the only cadaver dog on the mission, Spirit, a yellow Labrador retriever.
Looney says there was often no way of distinguishing Americans from Haitians, so each body would be dug up at a site. “The number of Haitians far exceeded the number of Americans recovered,” says Looney. “We would hand them over to the Port-au-Prince morgue” a morgue he described as a “hellhole” with hundreds of bodies stacked on top of one another. “They didn’t even use rubber gloves to handle the bodies until we gave them some,” says Looney. The Americans found the bodies they had turned over to the Haitians lying in the same overcrowded morgue weeks later.
Some estimate that thousands of Haitians still lie underneath the rubble. And while some American families may be leaving with a sense of closure, many Haitian families live without that finality. For Lonez Annoule, closure is more a process than a destination. He says that although he’s come to terms with his daughter’s death, he remains in disbelief at times. “Everywhere I go, I think I see her,” says Annoule. “All I want to do is see her one last time.”
Annoule says he is planning a memorial service for his daughter on April 16, which would have been Lodz’s seventh birthday. He recalls the frantic efforts to find her weeks ago. Each dust-covered body pulled out, Annoule hoped would be his daughter. “While looking for Lodz, I saved five children but lost mine.” Looney thinks of all the countrymen he helped recover and repatriate. “But she was the only one,” he says. “It’s the only case that’s going to haunt me.”
Ezili Dant’s Note: Vodouist ceremony – Kase Kanari or Bohoun is a Vodouist ceremony observed the 40th-day-after-death ritual that prayfully releases the souls of lives lost back to the Vodouist place of origin, back to Anba Dlo – back to the sacred primordial waters, back into the cosmic Ancestors’ hands and keeping.
– Comment from Dr. Valentine Ojo on HLLN post on Bohoun: A Vodouist observance – a release /Kase kanari.
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Fowarded Mail Re: Bohoun – A Vodouist observance – a release /Kase kanari Saturday, April 3, 2010 10:09 PM From: Dr. Valentine Ojo
This is an interesting ceremony reminiscent of practices taken from a mixture of African burial rites, showing adaptations largely influenced by Yoruba traditional beliefs At each crossroad, the appropriate rituals pertaining to them were performed by Vodouisant, asking Legba to grant passage to these souls.
Below the article in French, I have provided a rough but fairly accuirate English translation for those who do not speak or understand French.
It is very educational!
Dr. Valentine Ojo Tall Timbers, MD
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BOHOUN – CEREMONY TO EXPEDITE THE SOUL OF THOSE LOST
ENGLISH TRANSLATION (by Dr. Valentine Ojo) French original – bit.ly/9JPEGk
(See also – Ezili Dant’s Re-memberment for the quake victims – bit.ly/cd8gOI)
According to insiders who know Vodun ritual well, the souls of the dead when they are not sent back to their place of origin, wander around. They haunt the courtyards, homes and even enter the privacy of homes. Realizing this fact, it was necessary to hold rituals whose aim was to return these lost souls to the water.
As a result, the followers of Vodun, held 40 days of prayer that led to this Bohoun otherwise known as Kase Kanari for the Earthquake victims of January 12. This Sunday, March 28, was the eve of the 23rd anniversary of the passing of the constitutional law which grants everyone the right to freely profess their faith as they see fit.
Early in the morning, thousands of adherents of Vodun poured into the United Nations Square located a few meters from the shore, opposite the Embassy of Venezuela, with the air of the Bicentennial. Women looking for the most part like spidery silhouettes, and draped in their white crystalline dresses, strolled blithely into the area that was highly secured by several units of the National Police.
The men were wearing their black armbands on their left arms. Hounkou Bolokou Djavohoun Bohoun – this inscription was painted in black on Saturday underneath a vase which was surrounded by two vv; Legba and Bawon. On this platform against the background of a Red Cross, were enthroned all the representatives of various delegations of Vodouisant from the diaspora and from the country’s 10 geographic departments.
“I think it’s important to hold this ceremony to release the souls of our brothers and sisters who disappeared. Thus, they can come back in other forms to help us rebuild our country that was destroyed by the earthquake of January 12, 2010,” said Ms. Suze Mathieu, Director of the National Bureau of Ethnology. Sitting comfortably in her seat carved with fine craft art from the root of a mahogany, the patriarch of Vodun, Ayisyen, the Ati Nasyonal Francis Max Gesner Beauvoir had an infinite number of Pitit Fey that were so lovely to see and to admire. Proudly enthroned in the midst of delegations including the Director General of the National Bureau of Henology, Ms. Suze Mathieu, Ati Beauvoir explained to the uninitiated why it is important to send these souls wandering about to rest, by corroborating the theory previously advanced by Manbo Euvonie Augustus who played the role of Mistress of Ceremonies.
“We must recognize that each person has the opportunity to return to the earth at least 16 times. If we remember correctly, each human has arisen from the water. And at their death the various components of the soul will find the spirit of the water which takes the Agwe and command them to return to earth with a new face as male or female. If we do not hold this ceremony, Bohoun, the opportunity would pass forever, and their souls would wander for all eternity until they are able to cause tragic injury to the living. This ceremony, Bohoun, is organized for the sole purpose of enabling these souls to return to Agwe, the water spirit which in turn has the power to care for them properly.”
This explanation was provided by the Nasyonal Ati, Francis Max Gesner Beauvoir. Amid prayers, laments and incantations, the Pitit Fey advanced in single file. The women wear on their heads tied black bandanna with three overturned kwi bowls placed in clear water. The men, stepping after the women, had pressed against their chests, robust Kanaris wrapped in black tissue. After the parade, they went to place them on the white sheets on which are drawn with finesse by the same one hand of a tested vv, a symbolism that celebrates death. Throughout the Bohoun ceremony the men were seated on a Ti at BA, hitting their Kanaris with a piece of hard board which was attached to a piece of wood which they used to keep the rhythm. And the women hit their Kwi using chopsticks that they hold in the right hand, attached to a ring. “We believe it is an unforgivable disrespect and treatment of our dead, that on February 12, the other religions organized carnival festivities. We are dedicated Vodouisants who have an immense respect for the souls of our brothers and sisters swept away by the flood of violence on January 12 . It is in this spirit that we hold this Bohoun ceremony as a means for returning the souls to the place where they came from, in this case to the bottom of the perennial water, explained the hougan, Jeanjean.
A very pleasant rhythmic tangle forms the background to the gills with many incantations hummed by a smooth overlay of disparate voices. After many ceremonies accompanied by appropriate sign languages, the parade left the site of the ceremony to follow the building that housed the Chamber of Deputies which was still in ruins and before which laid a giant wreath of white flowers. The Ason offered to accompany the delegation to the last station while the aroma of the perfume, Florida Ready, powerful lwa pran f and catchy rabday supported by horns, the vaccinating piece played mostly by children and young people under rhythmic congruent arrangements, and the very Beautiful Goddess from Meyotte, accompany them to CZK Kolon.
Before reaching the empty space that used to house the Post office which was destroyed during the earthquake, several Manbo, unable to resist these leaks, are carried back in a trance. Se mwen ki ta di w its power m w. At each crossroad, the appropriate rituals pertaining to them were performed by Vodouisant, asking Legba to grant passage to these souls. Across from the walls of the Embassy of Venezuela in the west end of the United Nations Square, here they were directly on the coast. Amid chants, hymns of invocations, a dozen of mambo all dressed in white, carrying Kanari wrapped in black cloth, waded into the sea, three of them pushing toward the calm waves a crown symbolizing the souls of our brothers and sisters who disappeared.
Back on the square Manbo Euvonie Augustus, in an interview that she was kind enough to grant us, lamented the fact that Dr. Jean Bertrand Aristide is not one of us to take part in this ceremony. “No Vodouisant can ever forget that it was thanks to a law passed by President Aristide and proclaimed on April 4, 2003 that Vodun has finally become an officially recognized religion. The reactionary forces have forced him into a horrifying exile in South Africa. However out of gratitude, we Vodouisant must reassure Dr. Aristide that we are more determined than ever to hold high the torch of advocacy for him to return to live among us and accompany us as is his desire, in this perpetual struggle for a life with dignity that was what Manbo Euvonie Augustus promised on behalf of Vodouyizan Ayisyen.
YON SL NOU FB, ANSANM NOU F, ANSANM, ANSANM NOU SE LAVALAS. http://www.fanmilavalas.net 954-670-9209 PO BOX 2252 FORT PIERCE, FLORIDA 34954
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vendredi 2 avril 2010 HOUNKOU BOLOKOU DJAVOHOUN BOHOUN travay J. Fatal Piard pafart1@yahoo.com
Source: Via email from info@fanmilavalas.net
POUR EXPDIER LAME DES DISPARUS. bit.ly/9JPEGk
Selon les initis qui matrisent bien le rituel Vodou, les mes des morts quand elles ne sont pas expdies dans leur lieu de provenance, errent partout. Elles hantent les cours, les habitations et jusque dans lintimit mme des foyers. Fort de ces ralits, il convenait dorganiser des rituels dont lobjectif consistait renvoyer ces mes errantes sous les eaux.
Dans cette optique, les adeptes du Vodou, suite au sisme du 12 janvier ont organis 40 jours de prires qui devaient aboutir ce Bohoun autrement appel Kase Kannari. Ce dimanche 28 mars, on tait la veille du 23me anniversaire de lapprobation de la cette constitution qui accorde chaque compatriote le droit de professer librement sa foi comme bon lui semble.
Tt dans la matine, vers la Place des Nations Unies situe quelques mtres du littoral dans lair du Bicentenaire, juste en face de lAmbassade du Vnzula, affluaient des milliers dadeptes du Vodou. Les Femmes pour la plus part aux silhouettes arachnennes, drapes dans leur robe dune blancheur cristalline dambulaient allgrement dans cette espace hautement scurise par plusieurs units de la Police Nationale.
Les hommes, quand eux portaient un brassard noir la main gauche. Hounkou Bolokou Djavohoun Bohoun, cette inscription peinte en noir avec en dessous une vase tait entoure de deux vv ; Legba et Bawon Samdi. Sur cette estrade adosse au mur de la Croix Rouge, trnaient des reprsentants de diverses dlgations de Vodouisant venus de la diaspora et des 10 dpartements gographiques du pays
< Je crois que cest important dorganiser cette crmonie pour renvoyer les mes de nos frres et surs disparus. Ainsi, elles pourront revenir sous dautres formes pour nous aider reconstruire notre pays dtruit par le sisme du 12 janvier 2010 , a dclar Madame Suze Mathieu directrice du Bureau National dEthnologie. Confortablement install sur son sige artisanal taill avec une finesse artistique dans la racine dun acajou, le patriarche du Vodou Ayisyen, lAti Nasyonal, Franois Max Gesner Beauvoir avait une multitude infinie de Pitit Fy si beaux voir et contempler. Trnant firement au milieu de ces dlgations dont la Directrice Gnrale du Bureau National dHnologie Madame Suze Mathieu, lAti Beauvoir a expliqu aux non initis pourquoi il importe dexpdier ces mes errantes en corroborant la thse prcdemment avance par la Manbo Euvonie Auguste qui jouait le rle de Maitresse de crmonie. Nous devons reconnaitre que chaque personne a la possibilit de revenir sur la terre au moins 16 fois. Si nous nous souvenons bien, chaque humain a pris naissance dans leau. Et, leur mort les diverses composantes de lme iront retrouver lesprit de leau Mt Agwe qui les commandera de revenir sur la terre avec un nouveau visage soit fminin ou masculin. Si nous norganisions pas cette crmonie Bohoun, les Ti bon anj passeront toute une ternit errer jusqu ce quils pourront causer de tragiques prjudices aux vivants. Cette crmonie Bohoun est donc organise dans lunique but de renvoyer ces mes Agwe lesprit des eaux qui son tour est habilit les grer convenablement .
Cest ce qua fait savoir lAti Nasyonal, Franois Gesner Max Beauvoir. Au milieu des invocations, des complaintes et des incantations les Pitit Fy avancent la file indienne. Les femmes portent sur leur tte noue dun madras noir des gamelles contenant trois kwi renverss qui baignent dans une eau claire. Les hommes serrant contre leur poitrine robuste, des Kanaris envelopps de mouchoirs noirs suivent pas pas les femmes. Aprs avoir fait le tour, ils sont alls les placer sur ces draps blancs sur lesquels sont dessins dune main la finesse prouve des Vv dont le symbolisme clbre les morts. Tout au cours de la crmonie de Bohoun, les hommes assis sur des Ti chz ba tapent sur les Kanaris avec un morceau de hard bord dans lequel on a attach un morceau de bois leur permettant de le tenir. Et les femmes tapent sur les Kwi laide de baguettes quelles tiennent de la main droite et qui retentissent. Nous estimons cest une irrvrence irrmissible de traiter ainsi nos morts. Je vois que le 12 fvrier les autres religions ont organis des activits carnavalesques. Nous les vodouisants nous vouons un immense respect pour les mes de nos frres et surs emports par la violence sanguine du 12 janvier dernier..Cest dans cette ordre dides que nous organisons ce Bohoun qui veut dire crmonie pour renvoyer les mes des morts du lieu do elles venaient en loccurrence au fond des eaux prennes , a rappel le hougan Jeanjean. Un enchevtrement rythmique fort agrable aux oues sert de fond aux nombreuses incantations fredonnes par une superposition harmonieuse de voix htrognes.
Aprs moult crmonies accompagnes de langages gestuels appropris, le convoi partit du site de la crmonie pour longer le local encore en ruine qui logeait la chambre des Dputs prcd par cette couronne gante de fleurs blanches. Les Ason saccordaient pour accompagner la dlgation jusqu la dernire station tandis que larome du parfum Florida prt pou f lwa pran m. Un rabday entrainant soutenu par les cornets, les vaccines en tle jous en majeure partie par des enfants et des jeunes sous des arrangements rythmiques congruents, le rara Belle Desse venant de Meyotte, les accompagne jusquau K kolon. Avant darriver devant cet espace vide o taient logs les bureaux de la Poste disparus au cours du sisme plusieurs Manbo, ne pouvant rsister ces fuites, sont rentres en transe. Se mwen ki pou ta di w sa m w. A chaque carrefour par des rituels propres eux les Vodouisant demandent Legba daccorder le passage ces mes. Contournant les murailles de lAmbassade du Vnzula lextrmit ouest de la Place des Nations Unies, les voici exactement sur le littoral. Sur fond de chants, de cantiques dinvocations, une douzaine de mambos toutes de blanc vtues portant des Kanaris envelopps dans des toiles noires pntrent dans la mer. Trois dentre elles poussent vers les vagues calmes cette couronne qui symbolise les mes de nos frres et surs disparus. De retour sur la place la Manbo Euvonie Auguste, dans un apart quelle a eu lamabilit de nous accorder, a dplor le fait que le Docteur Jean Bertrand Aristide ne soit pas des ntres pour assister cette crmonie. Aucun Vodouisant ne saurait oublier que cest la faveur dune loi adopte par le Prsident Aristide et rendue public le 4 avril 2003 que le Vodou est enfin devenu une religion officielle. Les forces rtrogrades lont contraint de vivre un exil horrifiant jusquen Afrique du Sud. Cependant nous Vodouisant en signe de reconnaissance devons rassurer le Docteur Aristide que nous sommes plus que jamais dtermins tenir bien haut le flambeau de la mobilisation pour quil puisse revenir vivre parmi nous et nous accompagner comme son accoutum dans cette lutte perptuelle pour la vie en toute dignit, cest ce qua promis la Manbo Euvonie Auguste au nom des Vodouyizan Ayisyen.
J. Fatal Piard pafart1@yahoo.com
Ezili Dant’s Re-memberment for the quake victims and HLLN Delegation mobilizing Haiti-led Relief/Rebuilding – bit.ly/cd8gOI
Forwarded by Ezili’s Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network
The New Dark Age 
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