Lakou Souvenance

Here is a picture of Prime Minister Evans Paul paying a visit to Gran Lakou Souvnans in Gonaives on April 5, 2015.

Lakou Souvenance is one of the three grand Lakou's of Gonaives which are known for keeping specific African Voodoo traditions. In a quiet and tranquil location, the other two lakous of Gonaives are Lakou Soukri and Lakou Badjo-- all were founded prior to Haiti's independence in 1804. While walking around the courtyard of Souvenance under its giant trees reaching for the sky, you will return to your childhood days and have a feeling of walking in a wonderland. It is a mystical Haitian site where voodooists meet. It is a place where a cycle of ceremonies unfolds around some sacred trees. The trees, the domain of various Lwas, are respected, decorated and honored. Here, the annual festivities usually take place around the Lent season before Easter. Lakou Souvenance, Soukri and Badjo are referenced as sites of pilgrimage for several Haitian presidents in the late nineteenth-century. Prime Minister Evans Paul paid a visit to Gran Lakou Souvnans in Gonaives on April 5, 2015.

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Here is a Voodoo Funeral Ceremony in Lakou Souvenance

Mass graves after the Haitian earthquake in January 2010 were an inevitable consequence of such a catastrophe. But, to a country so steeped in and quixotically dependent on the use of ceremony to assist their departed from this world to the next, ignorance of their loved one's final resting place is difficult for the living to bear. Almost a month from the earthquake, one funeral director revealed he'd handled less than ten funerals. Considering the hundreds of thousands who died, the sum of souls still linked to their earthly bodies is a terrifying concept.

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Souvenance and its holy temple is where voodooists come each Easter to give tribute to loa deities. The temple is sacred to Voodoo believers, whose progenitors came from West Africa.

A five-day ceremony occurs, with drumming, dancing, chanting, and animal sacrifice. Livestock animals' throats are slit. White-robed participants then douse themselves with the blood to honor the deity, Ogoun.

Voodoo, officially sanctioned in Haiti, has 66% of island inhabitants practicing its doctrines, one of three major religions in Haiti.

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