Haiti

Searching for a cure to chronic pain, Julia Buckley visited a country notorious for witch doctors and black magic — and found it utterly captivating

- Julia Buckley

Everyone told me not to go to Haiti. By which I mean, well, pretty much everyone. The Foreign Office’s official guidelines warned against travelling alone and flagged the risk of kidnapping. The GP said, “Don’t worry, I’ll get you out of this.” The doctor at the travel clinic told me, “I can’t decide if you’re very brave or very stupid.”

Then there was the woman in the Post Office who asked me: “Why are you going? Isn’t that where they do black magic?” It didn’t stop once I arrived, either. “Why are you here?” asked a man at my hotel on my first morning. “What are you running away from?”

Why was I there? To get to know the side of Haiti that makes everybody shiver: Vodou. The religion that’s seen an entire country ostracised by the rest of the world since 1804, when the enslaved Africans ousted their French rulers and created the world’s first black republic. The colonial powers were terrified and promptly set about demonising a nation with labels: devil worship, black magic.