HAITI The Man Who Stayed Behind
On the tiny veranda of his two-room, wattle-and-daub hut outside Port-au-Prince, a grizzled ex-U.S. Navy pharmacist’s mate downed a tumbler of mahogany-colored Haitian rum. Through the low-hanging hibiscus and poinsettia came the first tentative beating of evening drums. To Stanley Henry (“Doc”) Reser, Haiti’s leading U.S born voodoo— practitioner, the sound was a call to ceremonies at the nearby temple in honor of Ogoun Ferreille, god of war and ironworkers.
Before the open, thatched voodoo altar, a hundred black friends crowded to greet him. With practiced authority, he poured rum libations and muttered Creole incantations, then genially beat drums and rattled gourds, joined in the shuffling and shimmying around the sacred poteau (post). As the dancing grew more boisterous, women screamed, thrashed, moaned, kicked, bounced bonelessly and collapsed —”possessed” by the loa (god) of the night. Though no loa “mounted” him, Doc Reser danced, drummed and drank happily till dawn.
Horseback Clinics. Reser is the last survivor of the U.S. Marines’ 19-year (1915-34) occupation of Haiti. A Utah-born Mormon, who joined the Navy in his youth to see the world, he went to the island 25 years ago as a chief pharmacist’s mate assigned to conduct horseback clinics for ailing peasants. Reser took to the people and their tropical ways at once. He studied the properties of native herbs, listened to the advice of voodoo doctors.
By 1929, when he was sent to Pont Beudet to take charge of an insane asylum, he was already deep in voodoo lore.
So congenial were Reser’s relations with the country folk that when the Marines pulled out in 1934, he was the only member of the occupation force to be kept on in his post by the Haitian government.
“They kept me as a souvenir,” explains Doc. Retired from the Navy since 1939, and from the asylum since 1941, Doc has kept getting closer & closer to Haiti every day. His wife and children—a grown-up son & daughter—have long since moved back to the U.S.
Veranda Consultations. Doc Reser lives frugally on his retired sailor’s pension, and is known as a soft touch for almost any countryman who passes his door with a hard-luck story. He drops in at Sonny Griswold’s American Bar in Port-au-Prince’ occasionally for a rum-and-drum session with visiting U.S. bluejackets. He paints and sketches reads and talks with tourists and others who come to him for voodoo information.-Oldtimers have estimated that Doc has 10,000 Haitian friends. When asked if he ever thinks of going back to Utah, he says: “Why should I? I’ve got everything here.”
— Vodoun (voodoo) religious rites, based on ancient African tribal customs, are widely practiced in Haiti, though not officially approved by the present government. The “black magic” elements of voodoo were outlawed decades ago.
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