The Voodoo Journal: Dispatches from a Haitian Grave - Softcover

Lajoie, Don

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0887535623 ISBN 13: 9780887535628

Publisher: Black Moss Pr, 2017

Synopsis

Some stories insist on being told. In his first published book, award-winning Post Media journalist Don Lajoie gives readers a gripping and unapologetically honest recounting of his experiences as an award―winning journalist in Haiti. Lajoie has hundreds of stories accumulated over his many years of work, and delights in leading the reader confidently though the dichotomy of the country, its garbage-lined streets, the devastating earthquake of 2010, the rich and diverse traditions of Voodoo, Haiti's ground-breaking architecture, its thriving music scene, and its multifaceted history. From the dramatic to the mundane, Lajoie (former Windsor Star reporter) tackles aspects of Haitian life rarely seen. His eye is prescient, combining awe and humour with a very real respect for the Haitian people and the land they cherish. At the heart of the book is a reflection of faith, death, and the degradation plus redemption of humanity.
This is a book about social justice, human rights, poverty, and human dignity.
Illustrated with photographs.

About this title

About the Author

Don Lajoie is a writer who has worked in Journalism across Canada for four decades, most recently
at The Windsor Star. His coverage of Haiti has garnered numerous national and Ontario Journalism
awards, including a National Newspaper Award citation and a Beyond Borders award for investigative
reporting. He lives in Windsor with his wife Grace, a son and a daughter.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Excerpt: THE VOODOO DIARIES

Chapter 1

Some stories insist on being told. This one spoke to me from the shallow grave of a reputed Ton Ton
Macoute killing field.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The day before, our second in country, we had visited a former Haitian army base, high in the hills
surrounding the city, where the RCMP was part of a UN mission to train the new Haitian National
Police force. A Mountie there told us of a killing field a fellow officer had visited, where skeletons
and decomposing bodies were left to fester and bleach in the sun and where children and animals
scavenged among the corpses.
We had heard stories like this on our first trip to Haiti. Was it the infamous grave site, Titayen -
which loosely translated means “little nothings,” allegedly used by the former dictatorship to dump
truck-loads of its victims among the bodies of the poor and dispossessed? We decided to see for ourselves.
Might as well get your feet wet with the most horrific shocks right away.
The Mountie’s second-hand directions were vague. But this place was like nothing we had girded
ourselves to expect. For one thing, it was too far outside the city, closer to St. Marc. As we slowly
traced a serpentine path across a desolate landscape of near desert, brush, bramble, scrub and gravel,
we were self-consciously aware that we had become diviners of death, dowsing for corpses. We came
across the odd bone, here and there, but whether human or animal we weren’t expert enough to tell.
I, at least, was beginning to feel ashamed. How was this ghoulish exercise journalism?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We began following her down the road, crossing about 100 yards farther and heading into another desert wasteland. This one featured a large slab of broken cement, like a chunk of bridge abutment. It had Vodou veve symbols crudely carved into it along with an inscription, “paix a ses ams,” it read, “peace to these souls.”
Once past the makeshift monument, the woman began scouting the ground, soon stopping over something that looked like a rock protruding from the gravel. She picked up a stick and began scratching around it, digging, stirring, the trench deepening around the rock. Once deep enough she put her hands into the excavation and began to twist and turn the object, side-to-side, back-and-forth, rocking on her heels, pausing at intervals to wipe the sweat from her brow. Finally, she worked it loose and, with a sickening crunch, pried her prize from the ground.
It was a human skull.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Near the outskirts of the city, in near total darkness with just a few fires burning in the fields to light our way, the car geared down and began moving slowly. Traffic on the two-lane was heavy. I could see the red tail lights before us disappearing into the smoky, dust-laden dusk and the headlights coming toward us through the haze, like a procession of torch bearing peasants in an old horror movie coming to slay the monster. Then I could hear something off my shoulder, outside the car, footsteps crunching on gravel, someone was running alongside us. Suddenly an arm reached through the rear window, grabbed me around the throat, and yanked at the crucifix, pulling my head forward violently as the shoe string broke. I grabbed my chest. My cross, the good luck charm, was gone. And I still had eight weeks in the country to go.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
All I know is, that day, something grabbed me by the throat. Ghost or thief, it doesn’t matter. It
might as well have been Haiti that had grabbed and shaken me, as though to say: You’ve come here,
now bear witness to what you find, the good and the bad. Every story counts, whether written by a
native Haitian or by a visiting white journalist humbled just to be there.
This book is my response. It is my wish that, in a similar way, some of these stories grab their eventual
readers by the throat as well.

Edition details

• Publisher: Black Moss Pr
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0887535623
• ISBN 13: 9780887535628
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 156