every day, and they put on weight, they build back up. But it’s not a cure. I pray that I might find a cure, but that is in the hands of God, the saints and the lwa”.
CURING THE BLOOD
In Haiti, the met tete (‘master of the head’) is the lwa who is your guardian spirit during your lifetime. Every person is born the ‘child’ of a particular lwa, whether they recognise that and formalise the relationship through kanzo (initiation), or not. This lwa lives in the blood and is a guide and protector to his or her child throughout their lives. But the blood also attracts other spirits who may use the fluid to possess or infect that person, as was the case in Loulou’s example of the sick child.
A lot of the leaves that Loulou uses therefore have to do with the blood – ‘building up the blood’, cleansing it, or making the patient ‘throw off’ blood. If she is pregnant, for example, with an unwanted child – a situation frequent in Haiti, with low uptake of contraception and sufficient poverty to make large families untenable – Loulou has medicines which can help her to painlessly abort the child by changing the spiritual constituents of the blood which reaches the foetus.
“I find the leaves in the woods and in the pastures around where I live. I know them because my mother taught me ever since I was little. There are secrets to how I pick the leaves, secret words I have to say, things I am not going to reveal. Sometimes I dry the leaves and powder them; sometimes I use them fresh. It is not my job to judge, when a patient comes to me; my job only is to make them well again”.
PRACTICAL MAGIC
Magical healing in Haiti is often very