Voodoo picture book

Yes, I have a picture book of voodoo. Its is quite awesome. Not only because it has great pictures, but also because it is a fabulous source. Reading more about voodoo, I believe I will end up focusing how voodoo has incorporated western religions into their faith. But first, some of my favorite facts. Ancient African religions were the first to believe in zombies and werewolves. Therefore, I can blame them for starting the awful Twilight series. By anyways, zombies were thought to be (obviously) the dead coming back alive, usually summoned by a voodoo priest. They were forced to obey the sorcerer and he/she could send them to terrorize hated members of the community. Many times, families of the dead would sew the mouths of the deceased shut (they could only wake up if they answered to their name) or poison the bodies just to make sure they were actually dead.

Werewolves were thought to be animals possessed by wanga or supernatural forces. Again, the sorcerer would summon these spirits and make them posses a wolves who then would suck the blood of babies. People were sometimes damned to be a werewolf by attempting to buy evil spirits.

Now the useful stuff. Voodoo religions believe in lwa, or simply spirits. Each lwa is a different entity, some good, some bad. They are present in the human body and nature which shows that a supreme God is ubiquitous. The lwa has been connected to Catholic Saints because each represent a different aspect of life. There are even lwa that resemble the devil and in some parts of Haiti, a lwa is known as Lucifer. While many aspects of the Christian religion were forced upon Africans, even the Christian God, in the eyes of the voodoo religion, it has taken on many aspects of the African supreme being.

Haiti voodoo research

After changing my topic, I needed to start new research on voodoo. I found excellent sources at the UWM library, but unfortunately, I could not check them out because of "policy issues." While ProQuest has had few articles (surprisingly) one of them I believe will be a very good source. This article talks about a former biochemist from Cornell, Max Beauvoir who returned to his native Haiti where his grandfather told him he would be the next voodoo priest. These priests are known as the houngan and there is one houngan for every 1,000 habitants of Haiti. Compare that to the Roman Catholic priest count (1 to 60,000) or 600 doctors for the 6 million people who live in Haiti. The most interesting part of the article is that Beauvoir talks about trying to get traditional medicine to be taught at local universities. He believe the teaching of traditional medicine would help local doctors to treat both "sides" of the illness, the medical and spiritual. Also, he is advocating for leaf-doctors (doctors who practice traditional medicine to "be taught how to improve their skills. They do the work here and they will for a long time to come."

Ebola Virus

One of the more interesting articles I have read was one by a UN health worker about the outbreak of the Ebola Virus in Eastern Africa. I found this article especially useful because it talked about both the health issues and the politics of Uganda. It is interesting and sad how people reacted to this epidemic: "scared neighbors, sometimes even family members, refuse to let convalescent patients back into their homes, sometimes burning their belongings or their entire hut. Deep-rooted African customs regarding burial of the dead are disrupted." Also, many villagers don't understand why and how these diseases are spread and many times they turn to religion and superstition to try and cure their infected. Bausch also touches on the political issues that are just as infectious as the virus. Bausch writes "I remember seeing a luxurious three-storey house being built in a small town, an almost space-age structure intercalated among traditional mud huts. "That's the district officer's house", my companions explained. "He was appointed last month." A glaring example perhaps, but not uncommon." Not only do many of these politicians not help their citizens, but the money they used to build their luxurious houses come from money taken from donations that should have gone to hospitals. Bausch also remarks that many times viruses like Ebola is spread through violence. He found that many times that troops of child soldiers spread viruses most often because they are living in unsanitary, close quarters. In all, I found this article very helpful.

One sided Anaylisis

I realize that everyone is bias. It is almost impossible not to have an opinion on an issue, most certainly political issues. However, in the three articles we read for today, all three of the authors have failed to address the most important counter-arguments against or for the West.

The first two articles, "The Case Against the West" and "What have we Learned, If Anything?" are critiques of American and Western culture and false perceptions of the new world we will live in. Many points in these articles I do agree with. Americans must acknowledge that in the future, we may not be a superpower, and the economy is changing and we must retrain ourselves to be able. I agree that American and her leaders can be hypocritical, act solely in our interest, are naive in what war is really like and often blame problems like global warming on other countries. However, there are specifics points that the authors of these two articles fail to address.

With the issue of trade and the economy, I don’t think it is fair to say that the United States is stalling trade liberalization. In econ last semester, we learned that one of the central dogmas of economics is that trade benefits everyone which, even if the typical American is unaware of this principal, government leaders are and are not trying to stop international trade. Also, the two authors fail to discuss China’s flawed economy. While the yuan is extremely popular right now, the Chinese government has refused to let the exchange rate raise because they want to make sure the products can be competitive in international trade reasoning they should be allowed to do this because they are a developing country. Not only have the Chinese government refused to comply with demands to raise its currency, the low value of its currency also is a source for human rights’ violations. We already know that people in China are paid very low wages and even as their currency is rising, the workers are not able to reap the benefits of their popular good because of the Chinese government’s fixed exchange rate.

This brings me into my second problem with these articles. The whole section on human rights violations. Yes, torture is wrong and yes, the United States has practiced torture in prisons, but are you serious right now? Asian countries have incredible amounts of human rights violations that occur all over the country. China, Myanmar, and North Korea are only a few countries in Asia that limit freedom of speech, hold political prisoner and guarantee limited rights to their citizen. To ignore the torture that happens possibly every day in these countries and to come down on the U.S. for their torture policies is like pretending you don’t see the large elephant in the room.

Of course, there are many, many things wrong with America. We don’t live in a perfect country and we may never live in a superpower land ever again. But without a doubt, these two authors have missed some key points. Yes, Americans are ignorant of war, ethnocentric and proud but to be blind to these huge issues of economics and human rights violations is just wrong.