I’ve been trying to make my Internet life a little easier. Not having three different blogs to keep track of is a significant part of that. Sure, there’ll be more things than just Vodou things to read about on the new blog… however, then it gives you all more to be interested in – or you can just skip the things that don’t interest you.
From now on, you can catch this blog at tamarasiuda.com. Hope to see you there!
I haven’t forgotten about you! It’s Lent, and closer and closer to Holy Week, that time of year when our Lwa go anba dlo and rest and prepare for the rest of the year. This evening I covered up all our altars in the badji so that they can be rejuvenated over the holy time. We’ll be having a huge party on Miracle Saturday (Easter Saturday) going into Easter Sunday – as the Resurrection occurs in the Catholic faith, so too do the spirits return to the world and make it new. Ayibobo! You’ll see lots more on this and the rest of the imamou.org page after Lent’s over.
Byenvini!
As part of our fifth anniversary celebration, La Sosyete Fos Fe Yo We has moved to a new home, at imamou.org. Over the next few days and weeks we’ll be adding more content including information on my upcoming book, but for now you can definitely check out the brand new shiny forums we have, and the links to other places. Enjoy and welcome back.
Again, our ISP killed the website and its database, as well as a second website that was being run by the webstaff. We’ve had it with Aplus.net and have started the plan to move to a new provider AND a new website here at imamou.org. Over the next few days, we’ll be migrating material from the other websites for the Sosyete Fos Fe Yo We here, including the forums and the Faithweb site material. Thanks for your patience with our continued technical woes. Our new ISP, Site5, seems pretty wonderful and hopefully we will no longer have the problems we were running into with Aplus.
My blog is suffering a similar fate to Haiti; it was destroyed by a force outside itself and nobody seems to want to help me get it fixed. Yes, that’s a petty comparison and it’s probably silly for me to be making it, but it is something that just occurred to me right now that blog is mirroring life. But that’s not what I’m here to write about today.
What I want to write about is a follow-up on a conversation that many of us have been having, on and off the Internet. It’s been just short of nine months since the earthquake destroyed Port-au-Prince. Yes, destroyed. Have you seen the pictures? Have you heard the stories? This is not just a small inconvenience with a couple of houses down the block that got their windows broken out. This is a major catastrophe with literally millions of people displaced, thousands dead, and a majority of the landscape pulverized into rubble. NINE MONTHS LATER people are still living in tents (and mind you when I say “tents” I am not saying the latest and greatest pop-up camper from Erewhon, I’m talking about a sheet or a tarp tied with some strings to the next sheet or tarp, like the “tents” you might’ve made in the kitchen when you were a kid with some chairs and a blanket.
The people of Haiti are expected to go through hurricane season like this. Yet people all over the world poured their hearts out in January and gave money, and many governments promised lots of money to help. The government of the country I currently live in was no exception; Hillary Clinton promised more than a billion dollars for rebuilding the city of Port-au-Prince alone, back in March.
But where’s the money?
Word’s out today that ALL this US$1.15 billion is still sitting on someone’s desk waiting to be freed. Heads should roll, you say. Someone should make this stop, you say. One person should not hold millions of lives hostage, you say. I agree. Who is this person? Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma. Because he disagrees with one provision of the massive bill, he’s been holding out on this bill, and thus stopping any U.S. aid from getting to Haiti, for NINE MONTHS.