Introduction
I
remember my godmother, Mambo Daille, as I saw her on my last trip to Haiti, almost exactly four years before the earthquake struck that took her life. When I came out of the djevo (the sanctuary where candidates for the Haitian Vodou initiation ceremonies called Kanzo are ritually secluded) on Sunday morning to attend Mass and receive my name as a priestess in the Vodou lineage, she was standing right there, shining in her brand-new clothes, tiny next to my very-tall godfather. I remember she spent a whole lot of time fussing over whether or not she thought Mama Sonia had done a good enough job of making me look good for my baptism, and she kept straightening my hat. She was impressed with the scarab beads that had been worked into the final few inches of my kòlye (a long beaded necklace worn by Kanzo initiates) in a show of respect to the ancient Egyptian gods and spirits of my Kemetic Orthodox faith. The photos that Mambo Fifi took didn’t turn out very well, but Daille looked so happy and so proud, even though my Kreyòl was lousy, my French wasn’t much better, and we could only communicate in broken sentences. She held on to me during the whole ceremony and both of us started crying when she told the priest what my name was: Chita Tann, a name that has been passed down more
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