About Worship

We are taught that creation happened a specific way:  “according to the bible” – people always begin by saying “the bible says and I quote “bla bla bla bla bla!”

I have known so many persons, many so called Christians, Buddhists, Moslems, et al, who spend their lives being unkind, spend time meticulously being selfish and very far from being Christ-like, Buddha-like, Mohamed-like or any enlightened being-like.

So, from very young on, I always thought to myself: “I know so few persons who are like Christ, or like Buddha or like any enlightened being I know of - - - - I wonder if this is my place to be?” 

So began my search, so started my quest and researches.  As young as three or four years old – I already knew that my people were noble – I already knew that my people came from kings and queens with a rich and amazing cultural heritage.

Now, the colonizer tried, tried, and tried (in vain) to destroy by stripping our black race of its very soul – by taking away our names, thinking he had destroyed our ancestral religion, our loved ones, our sacred habitats….  Though we were taken from different countries for the Afrikan continent – in our enslavement, we rallied our forces, we communicated though our drums, the calling for revolution through our conchs, through our Creole language which permitted us to brake down the barriers (the colonizer had set to keep us apart) and through our Vodou which became our ancestral religion, originally from Mother Afrika got revisited and adapted to help us surmount the systematic oppression, destruction, and destabilization of our people. 

Eventually, we became invincible.  We were charged with strength to defeat the colonizer and to be free of him Forever!  With this, I yearned to learn more – to reach out to my roots, to be in touch with my Afrikan ancestry.  Our European side was always thrown at us as what we owned to be our most precious treasure – whereas, the real riches we held in our midst, our only true culture, the only one we could identify to as our very own, was from Afrika!  Afrika, the Mother-land, Afrika, our roots!  Afrika, our National Heritage!!!!

From that point on, in my life, I had one focus and one focus only:  to learn about my ancestry, becoming initiated into my ancestral religion and dedicating my entire life to the betterment of my country Ayiti.

That is how I raised my children – To respect their Afrikan Heritage!  Not all of  my children think as I do and none of them are Vodouizan (Vodou adepts) – but they all respect it.  Two of my five children were named after Vodou Deities (loas). 

Aizan and Aida.  My son Aizan, is now 31 years old.  At the time of his birth, he was the only Haitian with that name.  Since then, there are a few families who have named their child “Aizan”.  Strangely, Aizan is a female divinity.  I chose the name for what the “loa” Aizan represents.  Aizan is justice while preventing obstacles and opening doors, Aizan is tolerance.  Aizan is called at initiation in the ceremony “shire Ayizan”.  National reconciliation is another attribute which Aizan has.  The most important of its assets is love while Aizan represents  kabalistic purity through the royal palm tree and a seed that reaps only the good and the beautiful with the purest of hearts (which heart is mostly shown as a hexagramme).  So with all of that, I named my son, giving him all of these protective power within his reach, through his name – representative of our ancestral religion and our rich Afrikan culture!

For Aida, my journey towards the finding and recalling of my roots had well been on their way.  The communication with the loas had been happening for the last three years.  There were days in the winter of Berkeley, California, when sitting facing the fire place and beating my drums, I would feel their presence – all around me!  At first, when I doubted, they made themselves known to me….some, with special scent and others by a disorderly conduct and noises.  I would run into the kitchen and find that my dishes had moved (as if someone had touched them).  When I related the event to my partner, he said that there was a ghost in the house and that I should not be afraid since he was harmless!

I thought to myself “ghost, o yeah!”  Usually, only perturbed souls remain roaming about for they are so low that they can contact or bother living beings.

Well, they let me know otherwise!  They contacted me in my dreams.  They sent me messages through my drawings of the vèvès (geometric figures drawn with yellow corn meal or flour - which attract the loas (spirits) in ceremonies.  They would guide me through my meditations with messages of hope for Ayiti.

I decided right then and there that we were putting so much energy into the organization of the Haitian community in the Bay Area ( approximately 60 total was the number we had found in 1976).  Each person given the responsibility of finding as many of us as he could.

We realized how few we were in 1977, when a young black Haitian “boat person”, was removed from his jail (in Florida) where he had a support group to be taken to Texas where he hung himself – he was not quite 20 years old (two years younger than my youngest son RastaJ (Jose Edmond Mangonés Dejean).   In organizing and mobilizing the Haitian community, we discovered that we needed to do some networking  within the Afrikan-American community and the Afrikan Diaspora in general.  We were able to mobilize over 300 persons of which only 60 Haitians marched and demonstrated in front of the INS building in San Francisco, California.

We realized that:  yes, though it was the thing to do, we weren’t sure how much of an impact it would truly have!  Knowing that many movements begun in the West Coast, we were hopeful but realized our place was in Ayiti!  Our duty was for Ayiti.  Our energies and commitment was to Ayiti.  The United States had produced so many fine sisters and brothers for our struggle here.  Angela Davis, Stoakley Carmichael, Malcolm X – the most powerful of the modern Afrikan-American world – shot by his own, feared and misunderstood my most!

I was expecting my fourth child – my daughter “Aida” and I let my partner know that our place was back home.  If dying was a possibility – than, the cause should be for “Ayiti”, for the liberation and advancement and enlightenment of our sisters and brothers from Ayiti.

So, our journey towards the light, towards the struggle begun on September 1978.  Aida was then six months old.  The next twenty years would be spent in Ayiti.  My first order of things was initiation when I arrived - - - - before house, before business, before friends!  Many cultural shocks hit me as I touched base with Ayiti Cheri.  I knew more than three, five hundred persons (many personally).  Yet, I had absolutely nothing in common with the majority of them.

At first, I tried to adjust my ways to see if there was any possibility of “fitting” into this society!  Unless, I was willing to make a conscientious decision to lose myself, I couldn’t do it and I would not do it!  I had no grudges against anyone but I stood on my grounds!  I did not want any compromising situations and there are certain folks that I would not  be caught dead being associated with. 

Yeah!  People thought I was a snob and that I was weird.  They said – mostly behind my back:  “sa l gen la a?  sa l kwè li ye konsa?” – (What’s up with her?  Who does she think she is?).  Well, if they had the guts to ask me to my face, I would gladly tell them.  I can only deal with real people.  People who aren’t blood thirsty and takers and abusers.  It became clear that there were not very many doers!  So, most of the 500 persons I knew belonged to a place where I did not want to be!  This was definitely not my hang out gang!  Even the teachers talked at the children or else they talked down to the children.  The agronomists talked at the farmers or else they talked over the farmers’ heads.  Both groups loved preaching not facilitating, not enlightening.

My quest became right then and there clear!  My focus would be in participatory adult education.  So, I concentrated on non-formal education with a participatory approach for both the adults and the youth.  We all have some experiences of life, whether we are a facilitator, a student, a professor – and whether we are rich or we face famine – and whether we are book savvy or non-alphabetized. 

So, the focus had to be on respect and how to reach respect through reverence.  It is important, no matter what type of field you are teaching, I like it better identifying it as facilitating knowledge.  The base for facilitating any given subject-matter should be subjective to the initial knowledge that person or group of persons hold.  Knowledge is a give and take situation. We learn from one another.  If we put ourselves or see ourselves as:  smarter than, better than, above the other - - - - we have nothing positive to bring to the table which could potentially be well received, absorbed, digested and some of which might even be adopted!  In Paolo Freire’s “Pédagogie des Oprimés” (The Pedagogy of the Oppressed) he explains how this type of communication and facilitation brings people to open up, to dialogue, to trust, to discuss ideas and to defend ideals.

For me, it is the most progressive teaching methodology I have encountered (at least as a useful tool for Ayiti).  For me, working in the country side of Ayiti, in tiny localities, it brought credibility to the dialogues and trust among the facilitators and the groups we worked with.  I don’t think that in all my years, I have ever learned (from schools or books) as much as I did during the fifteen years I worked in the Provinces of Ayiti – while learning and facilitating the enlightenment  of the Haitian farmer nation-wide.

I can truly say that this is when my love for Ayiti developed and grew more and more as the years went by.  I had a home in every small locality of the country.  From the West to the Far West (Bombardopolis, Port-de-Paix) – to the North East (Cap Haitien) all the way to the Dominican border.  The Plateau Central “Débauché” – all the way to “Bwa de Lorans”.  We met dynamic organizations like “Oganizasyon Peyizan Papay” with their amazing leader “Chavannes Jean-Baptiste”, in the South “Gaspard Brice”led the groupman from “Cayes” to Jeremie and Port Salut.  In the hills of Petion-Ville, we further reached Fermathe, Kenscoff, Furcie, Seguin and could continue on to the Vallee of Jacmel – the enchanted city contoured by well forested mountains with absolutely breath-taking beaches – some with gray and some with white sand.  Afè Nèg Konbit with one of the most admired and dynamic young priest “Pè Siko” had marvelous programs for the community of Kenskoff.  In Randel in the South, I worked with large groups of women and we did a small legume project from seed to the market which won them a prize.  I was invited to participate in an international program of “Women and the Environment” in Florida.  I won a trip to talk about our women and their beautiful spirit and the success of their small project and they did not have to pay back the funds borrowed because they had succeeded into getting their project from – seeds planted on the ground to marketing the produces”.

Could I have asked the “Gran Mèt” and the “loas” – The Great Master and the Spirits, to bless me with a life any richer that the one I have.

Danièle's Center for Harmonious Qi was born out of the spirit living within me.  As a Haitian person who grew up for most of her life as a Diaspora - all of my childhood memories stemmed from the odor of the pine trees together with the smell of the red earth from Furcy (mountain 2 hours from Port-au-Prince) reaching as low as 45 degrees in the month of December!;  the taste of the "grillot de cochon" - griyo kochon being fried in the corner street; the Vodou drums singing me lullabies and rocking me to sleep, and finally, the Condomblé ceremonies of Bahia do San Salvador in Brazil that possessed me within my very soul at the tender age of ten when I followed my father to Belem, Estado do Para in Brasil as he prospected for bauxite in the Amazon's jungle of what is now known as Brazilia.

The Center focuses on holistic approach to health and wellbeing.  With Vodou as my center I approach life and healing through the divinities that mount me.  All the spirits which guide me.  Through touch, as humans we feel connected for love is our breath!  Thai massage, Swedish massage, Reflexology, facials and bacials (cleansing of the back ending with a mummy mask and massage) are provided by appointment only.  Spiritual consultations by reference only.