Last week in Haiti

Last week was the Festival of Our Lady of Carmel, in Haiti, a religious festival extremely important to both the Catholic and Vodou believers of the nation. It stems from a 19th century event where there was supposedly a visitation by the Holy Virgin (or Erzulie, depending on your persuasion, or both, for it seems like a lot of people) at the waterfall in Saut d'Eau (yes, French majors, I know it means 'waterfall'. I didn't name it). Every year now during the festival, people from all over Haiti, and even Haitian expats in places like Miami, make a pilgrimage to the falls, to bathe in the waterfalls. The Guardian has a beautiful multimedia presentation of some shots from this year. It was heart-breaking to me, to read about people, in this year where people are eating dirt cakes, and fighting all the ancient problems of Haiti, spend a weeks worth of wages to make a trip to a waterfall in the middle of nowhere and plead with God for mercy. Heart-breaking, depressing, inspiring, reverence-inducing, hopeful, all at once.

Blogged from: Spiritual cleansing in Haiti | World news | guardian.co.uk

PS - I also, went and transcribed information into the Stub article for Saut d'Eau on Wikipedia. My first ever Wikipedia edit, I feel so growed-up, now!