Wade Davis and the Voodoo Temple
Dear Friends,
I got a flat tire last week. It was my fault because I take curves as if I’m being chased by James Bond goons. My rear tire caught the edge of a sharp, high curb. I got home fine, but a few hours later the tire was very flat. The rubber had folded upon itself like a double chin.
What’s so hard about getting a flat tire in a fancy suburb? Nothing. You call someone, they come over, they fix or replace the tire. The credit card transaction is handled by a dispatcher miles away. The whole thing takes a few hours.
Ethnobotanist and anthropologist Wade Davis got a flat tire while driving in Haiti and things didn’t go so smoothly. First of all, Haiti isn’t an upscale suburb, it’s the poorest country in the western hemisphere. In 2021, 17 missionaries from the U.S. and Canada were kidnapped and held for ransom after visiting an orphanage. Some were freed after a partial ransom was paid. The rest snuck away from their captors in the middle night! Haiti has fallen victim to hurricanes, earthquakes, a decade-long cholera outbreak, political instability, corruption, and crime.
And I haven’t even gotten to the zombies yet.
Wade Davis is best known for The Serpent and the Rainbow, the book he wrote after investigating the case of Clairvius Narcisse. Narcisse was a local legend who was pronounced dead by doctors, buried, exhumed, and enslaved. Davis tracked him down, did some research, and proposed that Voodoo priests used tetrodotoxin poison found in pufferfish to induce a death-like state. Upon exhumation they’d use a second drug, Datura, to induce amnesia and delirium. After that, they could tell him to do whatever they wanted. He could escape and get his old life back, and he actually did try. But nobody wants to associate with a former zombie.
So Davis wasn’t some starry-eyed missionary. He was intimately familiar with the local culture. Still, getting a flat tire while looking like an American tourist in Haiti is not the best situation. He also didn’t have any cash, which enraged the guy at the side of the road who had begun to fix his tire for him. Rather than make some arrangement to pay the guy, Davis drew upon his earlier research and gave him a secret society handshake. That earned him a free flat tire fix and an invitation to the ceremony at the temple across the street. Davis knew this was the type of temple where men in robes did spells and stuff by candlelight in rooms full of skulls. He said sure, he’ll go to the ceremony, which was later that night.
That’s the difference between me and Wade Davis. I would have just flaked on that invitation. “What time? 9-ish? Yeah, sure. Let me just, uh, grab a bite to eat and have a nap, wash up, y’know? Cool, cool. Yeah, I’ll see you there. Should I bring anything? I’ll grab a six pack on the way. No? How about Boggle. Apples to Apples?”
Wade Davis showed up that night to the secret society temple, unaccompanied by any of the friends he’d made while on the Clairvius Narcisse case. Even though he could act the part, the society members didn’t trust him. A group of men grabbed him and demanded he explain himself. He needed to impress them somehow. So he grabbed a skull filled with pure alcohol, doused himself, then lit himself on fire using a nearby candle. He wasn’t in any real danger - it was like putting butane lighter fluid on your hand and setting it on fire… just bigger. Ablaze, he offered the men the same secret handshake that got him the coveted invitation in the first place. They thought it was hilarious. Davis knew how to read a room.
Davis combined his skills as a scientist and anthropologist to get himself into and out of sticky situations. It sounds sexy and adventurous, but it’s also incredibly difficult. (Just ask those missionaries.) It’s also incredibly difficult just getting by in a place like Haiti. On a good day, you’re fixing tires at the side of the road; on a bad day, you’re a zombie.
If that’s not relatable, I get it. This is all pretty far out there. Let’s bring this story back stateside when Davis opened up his suitcase to a customs inspector at New York’s JFK airport. It was full of all the trappings and ingredients of the secret rituals: bones, poisons, and for some reason, a live cane toad. The customs agent was having a bad day, and apparently this was the last straw: “Look, it’s Easter fucking Sunday. I didn’t even want to fucking work today. I don’t know who the fuck you are. Just get the fuck out of here.”
Take from this what you will. The plight of the Haitians, the pluck of the missionaries, the gumption of Davis, the grit of Narcisse. Or, look to our grizzled New Yorker and his remarkable 1:1 F-word to sentence ratio. He just wasn’t having any of it.
Keep Going,
Geoff
Notes
Gang kidnapped missionaries in Haiti. Some missionaries were freed by ransom, others fled by sneaking out in the middle of the night.
Wade Davis was recently interviewed by Tim Ferriss and is the author of 23 books including The Serpent and the Rainbow.
Image by solarseven on Shutterstock.