A Fool In Haiti

Still in cayes-jacmel. Taken Outside the “other peristyle”.

the bull is not at all shy of showing his tackle

as well as working vodou and feeding people, i’m spending a lot of time entertaining the hougan’s grand kids!

Hello all! I’m now in in Cayes-jacmel staying at Temp Chango Chawa, the peristyle & south-east headquarters for the Federasyon National Vodouisan Ayisyen run by Ati Jean Andvenor Lundy. An amazing place and a wonder to be here. Local vodouisants keep turning up looking for food, money, gossip and to meet the 2 blancs.


This is Ati Jean Andvenor Lundy





Mr Lundy uses his motorcycle to visit the 150 peristyles in his jurisdiction – many of which have been damaged or destroyed and many are now without food. I am blessed to be staying in his home – his peristyle – a temple to Chango the Orisha and I send his request for help out to the world. Help can be sent to me in the first instance via my paypal account above.

Mr Lundy needs his motor cycle repaired ASAP and sends a request out to the mystics AND other concerned citizens of the world to aid him in raising the money – $US300 for the repairs.

If you speak Kreyol and are reading this, please call him on +50937522628. I’ll post up th details of the bank account for the Federaysyon shortly and money can be sent directly to it once that is organised…

This is his personal plea and I can personally vouch for the necessity and urgency of the situation here. All the money I’m receiving is going to great sources and really worth while people. I have full documentation of everything but not the resources here to upload every pic and vid I take. I hope to be able to soon.

I’m having fun, meeting some amazing people, having my eyes opened to new and strange and beautiful and powerful things and doing all I can do to help. Mambo Paula is well but still internet-shy. Thanks for reading! I’ll post again soon….

Love, Sean

there’s a massive story to go with this! but no time just now… It’s a peristyle in the wonderful little town of Cayes-Jacmel. Sorry to make anyone wait for the details

Hello – time is short for giving news and I’m being picked up in 10 minutes. Just wanted to say all is going well here in Haiti. We’ve left Auban to go and stay in Cayes Jacmel for a week and I’m immersed in peristyle vodou (rather than family vodou)… I’m meeting some wonderful people here. Actually, I’m meeting a lot of people… loads of hungry people come into the peristyle having learnt there are ‘blancs’ staying there and I’m taking their stories of forced conversions, food deprivation and some real horrors and I’m interviewing people… Often with an interpreter… I hope to get the videos up soon.

It’s half Carribean island paradise and half land of destitution. I’m feeling good about the little I can do but wish I was better equipped to get the stories people are telling me out just a little quicker…

that’s all for now.. i’ll try to upload a pic if possible…

hugs to all! love from Seani Fool

This is Papouche. One of LaBien’s adopted kids is always drawing birds and flowers
. I took loads of photos of his art but current bandwidth costs restricts me to s single upload at this time. He will probably be taken in to the Danthor Foundation Orphanage once it is ready

This is
La Bien – The Good Man

Check the link – see this is taken in the Peristyle. The Haitian Vodouisants use Machetes instead of daggers in their rituals…

The focus of ritual is always close to the ground – so seats are close to the ground too… including this car seat which is sat upon for meditations and more. Notice the pic of La Sirene in the background – beautiful goddess of the sea that she is.

La Bien feeds 25 people with the rent we pay him! His sort of vodou is called Natural Mystic or Natural Vodou… rather than the initiatory Peristyle vodou. Your donations have directly helped him feed 25 people! yeahh!!! Give more if you want and I’ll try to get more photos and videos up soon…

Best wishes from Sean

Hello there from Jacmel, Haiti…

Came into town today to share some really amazing news – everything is falling into place really quickly for getting the Danthor Foundation Orphanage up and running!! Well forget the old venues discussed for now – there’s a fantastic venue really close to LaBien’s plot which used to be a nightclub with several private rooms on the premises… The venue has not been used as a nightclub for quite some time but is amazingly well build and has very only minimal damage! There’s lots of rooms – maybe for about 24-30 kids initially and lots of room for expansion… Manbo Paula is really excited about it!!

We contacted the owner, and he’s a great guy – really sympathetic to the cause – the world’s first purely vodou-styled orphanage – and he will probably give really low rent. He hasn’t used the building at all and it was just sitting there anyway…

I’ve taken loads of videos and pics of it but alas, I’m having problems with broken USBs and flaky bluetooth and seem unable to get anything off the cameras and onto the net!! Grrr!! Hope I can show this to you all soon!

Hello all,

Well this is day 5 of my trip to Haiti – but feels like day 2000. I was really hoping to update this blog a lot more regularly with the photos, pictures and videos I’ve been taking, but the Internet Cafe (where I am now) is far far far from Auban… When I first made contact with Mambo Paula about coming here, she spoke of Auban. Well of course I quickly ran to google maps to look up where I was going! But there was no Auban and so I guessed it must have been a typo. But having arrived, I can see why it has no google-maps presence. There’s just nothing there at all….

And yet there’s so much there! The wonderful people I’m staying with in this remote world have barely got food to eat at the moment, but all the wonderful donations I’ve brought along are going a long way. Mambo Paula and I are paying $US20 each per day to stay on this family’s property – for food and accomodation. That $US20 is going a real long way – we’re feeding 25 people with it…

I hope my mate Clive (brighton, happy birthday mate!!) gets to read this – he donated a tent which four boys are staying in just next to the large tent Paula and I share with 3 or 4 kids.

So much has happened – I don’t know where to start – maybe with the sadness….

I have been heartbroken On the day we arrived in Auban we were led to a woman who was trapped under the EarthQuake rubble for 3 days – with her five now deceased children.

What can I say to a woman like that? What would you say? her five kids were taken in the 55 second quake and she is oh I don’t know what to say… but it is hard not to cry when she walks by. Mambo Paula and I administered first aid and made her a sling for her broken arm… We’re giving her pain killers for it too but nothing can take away the pain from losing all five of your children… harsh … oh soo harsh….

She is one of 25(ish) people staying on this compound I’m on… It’s a pretty special affair – if there was a bit more variety of food it would be complete idyllic eco-village… fruit trees: mangoes, coconuts, and animals running free: chickens and goats… just not so many as to feed all the people there… We are doing our bit for them and we’re feeling pretty good about what we’re doing here… Manbo Paula doesn’t take compliments too well – when people tell her she’s amazing she goes a bit bashful, so if you’re a friend of hers reading this – be sure to tell her how amazing she truly is!

So much to say errrrrmmm the big daddy of the place we’re staying at, at first I thought his name was Papa Baz but since have learned that Papa Baz is a term of endearment, like “bro”, “mate”, “guv” or whatever you might have heard… From day one of arriving here, he’s been immersing me in the family vodou rituals practiced in the area. there will be a huge amount written on him when time permits!!

I imagine a few people reading this want to know about the vodou – there’s (at least) 2 types of Haitian Vodou – peristyle vodou and family vodou. If you’re a western occultist the nearest analogy to this distinction would be High Magic and Low Magic… But even that doesn’t do it justice… Peristyle Vodou has an element of grades, initiations, secrets and allegiances to houses. Family Vodou is much closer to the Earth and more accessible. I’ve been introduced to both in some quite dramatic beautiful fashions and I’m really blown away by their beauty and simplicity…

Let me compare some vodou with Western Paganism (but bear in mind I’m only 5 days in!!!) – there has been no circle-casting in Vodou at all whereas in the West, there is a definite focus on casting a circle at the start of performing a ritual… people haven’t changed clothes, or taken their shoes off or turned their mobiles off to go to rituals… (oh that reminds me! there’s no food here, but there’s a fuckload of mobile phones!!! hungry people calling each other up on the local cell network… crazy!) There is also a big prayer element to the ritual – praying to deity is a thing not done so often in the West, but it is a powerful part of what I’m getting into here… too much to write, and so little time…. lots of candles and flowing water.

Money for Spirituality is something I find really challenging – always have… But here it’s an every day part of the magic and ritual.. if someone casts a spell or does a ritual for you, they expect to be proper paid for it… I guess that goes some way to display how confident they are with their prayers and rituals – you want something, they gonna cast the prayer and it’s gonna come true! Definitely hard to wrap my head around at first but now, it makes so much sense… Well, if I’m still doing it in a few months time let that be an indication of the success of the prayers said for me – for money.

And let’s just say one more word on money, coz I do feel deeply drawn to the vodou and have read much about it over the years… I tried to get involved and invited a number of times but found a number of dead-ends for myself… I kind of kept an eye on that door and wondered if it would ever open… I felt the sense of power behind it… And then woosh, the door is flung open and I’m pulled through… And I feel really keen to support it and the people who practice vodou, partly for its wonder and beauty but also for the sheer fact that I absolutely value the right to complete religious freedom.. and with this in mind, I’m really glad to be shifting my money in that direction.

I’ve been taken to 4 or 5 peristyles and they are amazing. I wish I could upload some pics from here but I can not and have no time right now to go into a big description… HOpefully I will before too long…

Oh back to Papa Baz – named Labien – the big chief on our plot of land… an amazingly generous man like few I’ve met in my life… supporting a number (6 or 7????) orphans… half of which were orphans before the earth quake. and these young children have the most adorable smiles and eyes. They are wonderful and I hope to upload some vids of them singing soon. They are a bit lost and confused – suddenly no parents. they earth shook. wtf??? but such delight when they see that people are being kind to them.. having a giggle and a laugh and playing thumb wars… and drawing pictures… lots of picture of flowers. haven’t quite figured out why, but the kids draw flowers incessantly!

“1 2 3 4 I declare a thumb war” but in kreyol…

Labien is one of those people who just gives every single thing he gets away… He lives really close to spirit/la mystery – and trusts in it implicitly… So he seems to feel he can give everything away and it will just come straight back and you know, it seems to… He has opened up his land for these orphans and this crushed woman (and some other people) as a part of his family vodou. I hope this would be some massive inspiration for more of the world’s churches and temples to open up their grounds to home the needy! Labien is a great man…

And I really feel like I’m doing some great work here. Before I came I was distressed and asked Manbo Paula if she was sure I wouldn’t be a drain on an already hungry population… she assured me that just by being here and paying for my accommodation I would be doing good… I doubted her but am so glad I followed through… just by being here I am helping to keep 25 people in food and tents and tarps and medicines… I never before felt I could contribute so much to our planet before. It is going to be hard to leave when the time comes but I may stay a little bit longer just to help out just a little bit more… I’ll stay if 1 – I still feel I am doing good and 2 – if I am able to afford to stay on doing this… If you have donated – thank you so so so so so so much! you are literally saving lives and I’m seeing it first hand… More donations are still welcome if you feel drawn to and there is a link on http://www.afoolinhaiti.me.uk/sponsors/ if you would like to… I will hopefully soon upload pics and vids so I can show you where your money is going…

I have learnt about 50 kreyol words and hope to learn more in the coming few weeks… I’ll sign out for now though. There is some ritual to St Jacques tonight I am going to – Instead of a ritual dagger/athame – we use a Ritual Machete – AYIBOBO!!!

Love, Seani Fool

(ps – sorry, i haven’t proof-read this)

Hello all,

I’ve now arrived in Port au Prince Haiti and have met up with Mambo Paula from the Danthor Foundation… not much electricity here so I can’t stay on long other than to say I’m safe, it’s warm, there’s really hard core wide devestation but everyone seems in good spirits. There was singing through the night and I’m starting to learn Kreole… I’ll type more as soon as possible… Blessings to all from Sean

I love this guy’s smile!

I’m delighted Creole sounds very familiar (at this basic level) to my inner French sensibilities