Voodoo colony is new world to dropouts

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33665, 15 October 1974, Page 30

Voodoo colony is new world to dropouts

(By

B. DRUMMOND AYRES, Jun.)

SHELDON. I Crooked as a cottonmouth moccasin and mired with dank mud, the road wends forbiddingly into a swampy thicket of stubby myrtle bushes and stunted oaks weighted down with the hanging grey moss that is the flora trademark of the “low country” of coastal South Carolina and Georgia. At the end there is a high wooden archway leading to a weedy courtyard encircled by a rude collection of tarpaper huts, each primitively painted with mysterious crosses and circles and animated dancers and spearcarriers. The residents are blackskinned, their mouths babbling unintelligible words, their cheeks etched with parallel rows of knife-thin scars, their shoulders draped with flowing robes of red and green, blue and brown. A large sign proclaims: “Notice: You are leaving the United States. You are entering Yoruba Kingdom. In the name of His Highness King Efuntola, Peace. Welcome to the Sacred Yoruba Village fo Oyo-Tunji, the only village in North America built by priests of the Orisha-Voodoo cult. As a tribute to our ancestors, the priests preserve the customs, laws and religion of the Afrikan race. Welcome to our land.” And watch your step. Witchcraft devotees The 35 people who inhabit this 10-acre settlement a few miles north of Savannah — most of them American-born dropouts from the miserable tenements of New York’s Harlem — are among the most fanatical devotees of witchcraft in a country increasingly mesmerised by whatever mind-mystifying practice it takes to give reason and meaning to life in the 20th century, be it voodoo, astrology,' extra-sen-sory perception, sorcery or satanism. Here in the very heart of the low country, where the black arts have been the poor Negro’s fetish since the first African slaves arrived more than three centuries ago, these one-time subway commuters, salesmen, waiters and artists fit in naturally, casting their horrible hexes, exorcising evil spirits, concocting powerful potions. They founded their “kingdom” four years ago, when they became dissatisfied with their spiritual and worldly lives in New York and decided to seek fulfillment by returning to the tribal ways of their African forebears, ways that included polygamy, ancestor worship and voodoo as practised by the ancient Yorubas of Nigeria. “We no longer could stand all the negative forces that: destroy life’s balance in New York,” explains King Efun-1 tola, a wiry, goateed pipe-j smoker known familiarly asi Kabiyesi. , He says he once lived on

j 115th Street in Harlem and sold African curios in • Greenwich Village. But like I most members of his tribe, he does not disclose his ’ earlier name, insisting that ' he now lives in another ' world. i True, there is a certain . amount of old-world com- , mercialism in this new world. The gin that is liber- : ally sloshed over the iron idols during tribal cere- ' monies cannot be conjured up without the green power of the almighty dollar. Curious tourists and women’s clubs who need a ’Voodoo lecturer” are asked ' to kick in to the kingdom’s 1 kitty, lest its subjects be forced to live on food stamps or stoop to hard labour in nearby fields. The local blacks — and poor whites — who seek the assistance of tribal witch- ’ doctors, usually arrive with ' cash in hand, comforted by 1 the knowledge that money 1 also works magic. Is $25 too < much to ask for a “root” — 1 a shred of coloured cloth or 1 a bright stone — that will make an evil enemy fall ill r or a wavering woman fall in ’ love? 5 The unbeliever who would ; cry “Hokum.” would do well ’ to ponder whether anyone ' but a true believer would J “leave” the United States — ! even a miserable Harlem ’ tenement — to go native in : a crude hovel set in a ‘ marshy kingdom that is 5 swarmed by maddening mos- ’ quitoes in summer and ‘ chilled by grey sea mists in r winter. “It’s all where you find peace and I happen to find it here in the absolutely simple way we live and in ’, the voodoo,” says a former ' Harlem real estate salesman ’ who now calls himself Chief I Afolabi. ; The way he lives is a ’ scene straight from Vachel ; Lindsay, complete with not only authentic African language, dress and idols, but , also children underfoot, ■ scrawny dogs slinking off ' into the bush, open-hearth 1 cooking odours hanging in • the air, booming drums, ! clacking gourds, jangling bells, guttural chants, pierc- ■ ing screams, writhing ebony , bodies glistening with sweat, ; beads, seeds, powders, fire, ’ water, earth and a proud ; white rooster suddenly gone . limp and stained red with ! the blood of sacrifice. Sometimes the South Carolina authorities object a ! bit, particularly to the polygamy and the absence of public schooling for the . kingdom’s youngsters. The village leaders counter — successfully, thus far — that no villager has gone through more than one official wedding ceremony. They ! point out that the settle- ’ ment’s youngsters go to the , Royal Yoruba Academy, which in the eyes of the law I is but another of those ■ many private schools that have sprung up all over I South Carolina in the wake of desegregation. Affinity for slaves The “new Yorubas” puriposely cut out their kingdom i in the swamps of South Carolina because of the affinity they felt for the an- ! c i e n t, voodoo-practising ; i slaves — some of them probably Yorubas — who; | were brought to the low I •country from Africa back in! the 1600 s to provide the! !bondaged underpinning for! (the white man’s rice and (cotton cultures. Slavery and the rice and (cotton have long since disappeared, replaced by weeds and the bondage of some of ;the most abject poverty in the United States. But the descendants of the last of those slaves — the g r e a t-grandchildren and great - great - grandchildren who were born in the low country and still live here — retain many of their forebears’ primitive customs. ; Many still speak in idiosyncratic “Gullah” language, inverting phrases so that “he goes” often comes out “go he.” There is probably no place in America today where the black arts are taken more

seriously than in the low country. What is a hip weekend laugh in Cultise, California, is a way of life in Sheldon and surrounding Beaufort County. Though the most famous of the local witchdoctors are dead — men with names like Dr Buzzard and Dr Eagle — lesser-known practitioners still cast spells and remove hexes.

Among them is lanky, bespectacled J. E. McTeer, a 70-year-old white Beaufort Countain who served 37 years as “the high sheriff of the low country” then wrote three books about all the fun he had. He contends that the “best” and “truest” witchcraft in America is practised in the Beaufort area and adds:

“I get 1000 letters a year asking about voodoo. Everybody in the United States suddenly seems interested, what with all those factorymade powders and roots that you can now buy. “But all that stuff is hokum. The real stuff is when a medical doctor from Charleston tells a fellow like me that my voodoo root cured one of his patients who was complaining about constant stomach ailments that not even exploratory surgery could find. "Get it?” Some do. Some don’t. It depends. — (Copywright, “New York Times” news service).