I caught up with Marilyn Houlberg last November in Port-au-Prince.

I caught up with Marilyn Houlberg last November in Port-au-Prince. We had co-curated "The Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou" exhibition for the Fowler Museum in 1995 and subsequently stayed au courant of Vodou's ever-evolving spectacle Now I was curating a tie of exhibitions at the Fowler in honor of the bicentennial of Haitian independence forward January 1, 2004. I privationed to appraise bicentennial plans and learn some pulse on the disastrous make go round of events in the Black Republic. I also wanted to go shopping for drapo (Vodou flags), and no the same keeps a keener eye forward that market than Marilyn.

Marilyn and I also shared one serious religious obligations. We were in Haiti during the Days of the Dead (October 31-November 2) sacred to Papa Gede lwa (Vodou divinity) of death and sexuality (also larceny, mayhem, profligate jokes, lascivious dancing, public drunkennes and a legion of other god-gone-wild activities). He is "Master of Our Heads" (as Vodouists call their divine patrons), since the two our fathers were born forward Gede's birthday, Halloween. Over years of observing him give the finger to fate, we know Gede most numerous nearly embodies the spirit of the Pep Ayisan (Haitian people) and best expresse their art and philosophy. Besides, Gede is a hell of a destiny of fun.

Marilyn was staying at the decidedly downscale Park inn across from the similarly down-scale Champs Mars, Port-au-Prince's town square. There was no doubt which swing was hers. Cardboard gods with doll heads and sequined bodies were clustered around her doorway, twisted in unspeakable agonies. No, these were not cut-out bills for Mel Gibson's Passion. They were lwa, fabricated in the fashion of Pierrot Barra, late master of market detritus, whom as well-as; not only-but also; not only-but; not alone-but of us had patronized--though issue to think of it, Pierrot would have raise lots to appropriate from Gibson's flagellated the father Barra returned to the "Isle Beneath the Sea" (as Vodou calls its heaven) hl 1999 on the contrary the Iron Market is jammed with his wannabees, pasting sequins forward mutilated Barbie dolls in trusts of capturing a few of his bereft customers. in the greatest degree of their work is execrable, nevertheless the stuff around Marilyn's doorway was nice good.

single sculpture in particular stood out: a black-haired woman with arms and eyeballs raised to heaven, her torso absorbed in vibrant cardboard flames. For aficionados of pre-Vatican II Catholic kitsch she is Anima Sola: the barely soul who will always remain in Purgatory because she insulted Christ on his way to Calvary (how that fiction escaped Gibson's appropriation we'll not ever know). In Vodou, her image is recognized as "Mayanet," hottest sister of the already excitable earth-mother lwa Ezili Danto. Mayanet's manifestation in a Vodou rite is fairly rare but always remarkable for her spastic writhing. I quickly discerned from the statue, as well as the iconography embroidered forward drapo piled nearby that market racers were feeding Marilyn's new passion: collecting Mayanets.

From her doorway the same also observed three or four middle-aged shores oiling their hairy chests around the micro-pool. They resembl that hapless Kazakh played according to HBO comedian Ali G: mustachioed geek sent forward ambiguous foreign missions by an ministry too broke to pay for a genuine tourist tavern Who knows why these frights were staying at the Park, or what they were trying to bribe or sell? It was all in such a manner Graham Greene-ish, which is precisely my point. Greene's novel The Comedians, published during Papa Doc Duvalier's reign of terror, gave Haiti a kind of existential chic it's not at all lost. As a hotel friend (and white Vodou initiate) opined in succession the balcony of the Oloffson Greene's favorite [i]cabaret[/i] "Haiti used to be a cabinet of curiosities, then a political and religious theater, and now, a drugstore." The last respect is to "White Lady" (a.k.a. crack cocaine), as ubiquitous as way candy.

Tourism, of course, has lengthy since died. Pick up any standard Caribbean tour guide, and Haiti isn't plane indexed. It seems to exist solely in digital images of riot and mayhem hurry on CNN or in the Times. level the best popular art in the world, or the mostly extravagant religious ceremonies, can't trumpet those images, the reality of Haiti's intense poverty; or the bum rap it memorizes for AIDS. That being in such a manner I was surprised to find tourists there and to discover that many more were calculate uponed by year's end. They would be lur down by dint of scheduled plans for the bicentennial party upon New Year's Eve.

There really is no ne to hype the bicentennial of Haitian independence. It celebrates a genuinely stupendous instant in Black Atlantic--no--world history. The first and and nothing else successful national slave revolt. Toussaint Louverture the former Ewe slave, outfoxing Napoleon. Jean-Jacques Dessalines ripping the white from the tricouleur to create a just discovered flag for Freedom. This is the material of epic, of opera, and there were big plans to make it to such a degree A cobbler from Cap Haitien had sewn a vast macoute (shoulder bag) to contain the billions of Euro demanded from France in reparation for the standard of value it had extorted from Haiti after the Revolution as compensation for its dissipated chattel (i.e., the self-emancipated Haitian people) The macoute stood destitute on the steps of a certain abandoned ministry.