No Vengeance! No Voodoo!

By Philama Ductan

When a religion is favored by the uneducated and the downtrodden, it’s hard to tell the difference between tradition and reality. It’s a long trek, especially for a teenager who has held Christian values and who has witnessed the most horrifying voodoo ceremonies. Kootan offers us a fresh perspective in the inner workings of voodoo. He takes it upon himself to enlighten the believers who ignore its beneficial values and who use it instead to bankrupt every city in Hispaniola. To get to the bottom of the way ancestral spirits come and go, Kootan tests every necessary means at his disposal—people, adventures, and his two best friends: his dog, Cezin, and Kitibel, his mentor. What he uncovers is the yearning for his own life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 28, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796043426

Philama Ductan

Terror, adventure, and discovery for those who like surprise. In fact, we all do. This novel' as short as it is, reflects the trough reality of Hispaniola's life in terms of its people in regard to the voodoo's practice and any more. In often time, Dominicans and Haitians who co-habit this Tainos's land have been so resilient and generous on earth but, the externals forces make it impossible to break the dark cycle of poverty...this book explain these circumstances and many more...

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Copyright © 2019 by Philama Ductan.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 06/28/2019

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Contents

Prologue

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter XII

Glossary

The Author’s Corner

Hello, Darkness!

Through my blind eyes

I can see two butterflies

Through the fog passing by

I can see a rainbow in the sky

The butterflies wheeze and fly

And finally melt into the sky

I cry, but I don’t know why

I say: Hello, Darkness!

They must be you and me

PROLOGUE

B ELIEF IS WHAT consumes us all.

It brings joy some days and tears the next. Noticeably, even with a strong set of beliefs, empires fall or see their power diminished. Religious beliefs are strong and run deep into our psyche. However, on the island of Hispaniola, where Voodoo has the highest of practitioners, there is a striking sense of more joyful moments than the painful fight for survival that mires their lives. Voodoo and deaths, like war and poverty, represent the norms that impoverish the island. History must serve as convenient guide to folks who tend to make ruinous mistakes countless of times even when experience dictates them otherwise. But what is Voodoo all about? What compels the island folks into its practice and for Voodoo to become the manifestation of a spiritual throwback?

There are more questions lingering in our reptilian brains. For instance, is it Voodoo or stupidity that prompts people to seek for revenge instead of settling disputes amicably? Impulsively a dictator annihilates scores of Alkebulan descents in Dominican Republic. Even in Haiti, what compels a woman to abandon a famous dog that was gifted to her? The donor ideally hopes to change her thinking mind about the voodoo. That action paved the way for a boy to contemplate what else he could have done to change people’s minds about this plethora of gods.

Perhaps not! But as it turns out, peasants, merchants, and scholars alike have all been put to the task of ridding themselves of Voodoo’s spell. To the donor, it is of profound ignorance not to analyze the facts. Conceivably, all the answers reside in the island itself. And the boy hopes by adventures, Voodoo will be eradicated in Hispaniola to pave the way to his Christian values.

In fact, Hispaniola was once home to great warriors, kings, and queens; even today, their marks can be noted throughout the entire island with castles and a large swath of natural resources. But now Hispaniola has two neighboring countries: Dominican Republic and Haiti. One of the things they both share, remarkably, is the dark-side practice of Voodoo. They perform similar rituals and ceremonies involving the cruel slaughtering of chickens or fowls. They worship the loas to avenge, retaliate, take people’s life, impoverish the island. But can the voodoo be blamed for these crimes?

Voodoo was the legacy, way of life of the Alkebulan’s people. It included everything in that society but not limited to religion, law, philosophy, psychology, medicine, astronomy, science, even fetishes; and because some scrupulous practitioners use the latter or fetishes in the name of Voodoo to perpetrate crimes, the entire concept has been wrongly adjudicated.

The invaders came to milk Hispaniola and declare war on the natives; they forcibly imposed a set of critical Christian values on them. They also brought another race called Alkebulan to sell as slaves to work on plantations. Could one say these invaders, with their Christian values, brought in fetishes and poverty in the island as well?

Be they natives or newcomers or Christians, Voodoo seems to overpower the people’s mind. But did all these turbulences bring in peace and happiness in Hispaniola? A Catholic boy named Kootan, baptized and Holy Communion receiver, vows to find out.

Brace yourselves! Kootan meets Kitibel to recount vividly this maelstrom.

CHAPTER I

N OT TOO FAR into the distant past, a boy named Kootan found himself caught in a web of intrigue that would change his life forever. He was growing in an island that was implicated in all sorts of customs; Voodoo and poverty trooped like a pair that disrupted the people’s livelihood. He was struggling to make sense of any of them all. He liked to read as much as he enjoyed asking questions. It was through questioning that he learned how the populaces, mainly the Tainos and Alkebulans, initiated in the island on the first place. Now his goal was to eradicate the intricacies of the voodoo from the people’s mind-set, which bankrupted his poor country.

At an early age, Kootan seemed to be smarter and more docile and apt than the other boys in Valparaiso City where he grew up. While his peers enjoyed playing with toys and destroying them in the process, he declined to be any part of it; instead, he would prefer to sit beside Pekles, his sexagenarian father, to do schoolwork on global history. Clearly, Kootan wanted more than that; he would prefer someone he could rely on to teach him what he needed to know to pursue his objective. Can the loas really speak, smell, eat, and drink? He sought to find out.

Kootan’s father taught him about a war that was vehemently fought to expel the foreigners from the only two countries in the island for many years. His dad seemed to rejoice in telling him the story when the invaders had dissected the island into two countries; they named each— Dominican Republic on the east and Haiti, west.

They changed the way of life of the people and their heritage and implemented slavery system. Indisputably, the rapport between Voodoo and Christianity began in Hispaniola.

That was not much for Kootan to bear. He could have cared less about the assaults and affronts. He figured if he stuck around much longer, his dad would teach him all he needed to know, but he felt so much he was willing and able to discuss with him by fear of reprisal. He would prefer to meet somebody else to learn spontaneously and accurately.

Kootan was aiming high, courageously seeking to know what Voodoo really was and embarking on a journey to sort out the innate difference between ceremony and black magic, between reality and superfluous montage, between hearsay and fallacy. If he could have done something in his power, he would not hesitate to call for a turnabout, a form of imposed eradication. To him, belief in Voodoo was one thing and to use it to manipulate others was another.

Kootan was born in Cabaret but grew up in Valparaiso, a city enclave in the heart of Hispaniola. While many other communities represented a troublesome for their residents, Valparaiso remained unrestricted livelihood, a spectacular municipality with evergreen parks and landscapes, and located not far from the intersection of Dominican Republic and Haiti.

Part of Kootan’s routine was also to go by bus with his fellow Boy Scouts to the borderline of Dominican Republic and Haiti to search for evidences of Voodoo, but not only that, he believed he would visit scores of palaces and the remnant of Citadelle Christophe in Haiti, which was the only kingdom that ever existed in America’s history. When the crowd got there, out of fear, all his friends disappeared altogether and left him to skirmish alone.

Boldly, Kootan would arm himself with an artifact, the cross of Saint Andrew, which was gifted by Father Bonenfant for protection when he received his first communion. He walked up a steep climb and crossed a calm river to reach Dominican’s land. Along the way, he frequently heard many indiscreet things behind the mountains and valleys that made him very perplex.

Kootan yelled, Is it you, Damballah? I am not afraid of you. I am so much bigger than you … don’t even try! Just to let you know.

He would pay close attention to the details, take notes, and keep them for himself.

One of his greatest recollection was when a loud thunder once had people running for cover during a pleasant day; even the donkeys jarred ceaselessly. That change in nature, or the reason for it, was attributed to voodoo spell, Kootan was told. But he was determined to find out why people believed that was so. It captivated his mind and plowed him into the deepest and darkest side of the Voodoo religion. He was inquisitive, malleable, and articulate. But when he began to hear and see things out of ordinary, he quickly drifted into a state of confusion. He was lucky to be attending a prestigious Catholic school, where the teachers (all of them were priests) talked cynically of Voodoo and mentioned that its worshippers and uninformed advocates would tend to use it as part of an informal vengeance instead of using it for its benefits. It was through this system that the practitioners uncovered the importance and effectiveness of bare-bones plants when it came to local medicine and addressing health issues. But how did Voodoo get so deep into the mind-set of the people of the island—from heads of state to the people at the bottom of society?

Pekles taught him that when the invaders set foot on the island, they found dark-skinned Alkebulans or Arawacks, Caribs or the Tainos. There were five states altogether in Hispaniola. Subsequently, they forced the inhabitants to reject their own culture to embrace theirs. From five governors, the island decreased to only two presidents: Neibi Yaskim for Dominican Republic on the east and Neiron Francis for Haiti on the west.

Neibi Yaskim governed with an iron fist and imposed fines on those who wished not to follow his order, while Neiron Francis governed with a kidnapping strategy or false arrest. He allowed Voodoo ceremonies to take place openly at any time. Both funded small and large temples and spent a great deal of time proponing the inherent practices of the same.

The two heads of states banked on the Alkebulan culture to further entice the citizens into submission. That was in every facet of life. They claimed to have inherited spiritual powers from their God-chosen ancestors. They stayed in power at the mercy of human blood shedding; and for the sake of sacrifice, murder came about daily. It was said that some of the most sought-after and powerful goddesses would have to taste fresh human blood, or else, invoking them would be a waste of time. A peasant who didn’t bring along a live fowl at the temple, for instance, would be a violator of some sort and expelled from the inner circle. And no one dared to challenge that out of fear.

Neibi Yaskim liked to scare his people and enforced curfews without having to explain why. The older he got, the more discourteous he became. He shocked everyone when he announced that his only son, Belladel Yaskim, would succeed him if he died. Despotism was the way to go, like it or not.

Neiron Francis, on the other hand, had a son named Duval Francis. He was bad, but he was not as bad as his father. He was compassionate of the plights the Haitians were enduring. He didn’t expect to rule forever; he promoted his army soldiers and expanded plantation fields to avoid food shortage. He designated his only son, Duval Francis, to replace him upon his death. Now Kootan’s dream began to change to cert.

Pekles had a close friend named Pepe, who was a Voodoo priest. He used to make a habit of traveling back and forth between Haiti and Dominican Republic to make fortune out of fetishes. Both Pekles and Pepe had been soldiers in the Haitian army. They shared common interests not only as being soldiers but as the loas’ believers. But Pepe was secretly dating Lydia, a young mambo who worked for Don Livorio, a Dominican leader, revolutionary, voodooist, nationalist. Don Livorio swore to outburst all the invaders’ remnants in Dominican Republic. Charlemagne Peralte—voodooist, leader, revolutionary, and nationalist—was his counterpart in Haiti. So Pepe became a messenger between Peralte and Livorio. He fell in love so much for this Dominican woman that he built her a nice house. Unfortunately, Pepe was called upon to return to Haiti to fight the Haitian’s war of liberation on the command of Peralte.

Kootan was in awe the first time he saw Pepe in his dad’s home in Haiti. He overheard Pepe talking about Lydia and his daughter named Kitibel.

I have a girlfriend named Lydia and a daughter in Dominican Republic. My daughter’s name is Kitibel. She is in her twenties, I suppose. They both are doing fine, confessed Pepe to Kootan’s dad.

But this is not the end of the story. Kitibel too has a daughter named Briane. She just turned six years old, a little bit younger than your son, Kootan. And that makes me a grandfather, Pepe said laughing.

Pekles uncorked a bottle of rum and poured some in Pepe’s glass, which was his way of congratulating him. But Pepe looked a tad heartbroken; he had had better hopes for Kitibel.

See, you have every reason to relocate here, my friend,