A North Carolina woman died while on a Vodou retreat in Haiti. Dana Jackson’s son says she died after she traveled to Haiti to learn to become a Manbo priestess.
A Manbo priestess “performs ceremonies, initiations, healings, and divinations,” according to Harvard University.
Timothy Jackson told USA Today that his mom left for Haiti on July 1 to learn how to become a Manbo priestess. He expected her to return to the United States on July 26.
“Four years ago, my mom started to do a little bit of research on the African traditional spiritual belief systems and Vodou was a part of that,” he said.
Timothy said Dana’s religion had a strict no-communication rule. Timothy heard from Dana on July 12th, when she texted, “we will talk on the 21st going to church tomorrow.”
He said the no-communication rule made him nervous, but he wanted to respect his mother’s decision. He last heard from his mom on July 21, when Dana asked her son to, “pray for me.”
The next day, Timothy did not get a message from his mom, and he began to worry.
Timothy said he was comforted by the fact that she traveled to Haiti with a group of friends.
“The people that she went down there with, their name is Sosyete and I believe that that means society in the Turkish language and Nago,” Timothy said. “These weren’t strangers that she went down there with. These are people that she’s built a relationship with.”
Around 5 p.m. on July 22, his grandfather called him and broke the news that his mom had died. He said he hung up on his grandfather. When he called his grandfather back, she said that his mom was not coming back home. He hung up on her again.
In a panic, Timothy reached out to one of the leaders of the Vodou group that went to Haiti with his mom. The first thing they asked him was, “how much did he know?”
The person told Timothy that his mom had gotten extremely sick during the Vodou ceremony. She fainted, and when she regained consciousness, she didn’t know where she was.
They took her to a hospital, where she suffered seizures and died from a cardiac arrest. Timothy said their story changed and they told him his mom suffered from an asthma attack.
Timothy expected his mom’s body to return stateside on August 16, but that didn’t happen.
Timothy contacted the U.S. Embassy in Haiti for help to retrieve his mother’s body.
“I haven’t heard anything,” he said. “I don’t even think the U.S. Embassy got involved, or even received the necessary paperwork until about four days ago.”
USA TODAY reached out to the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince, but they did not respond prior to publication.
Vodou is an African religion that is derived from a word which means “God” or “Spirit”.
According to PBS.org, alternative spellings of the Vodou religion can include Vodoun or Vodun, but never Voodoo, which is considered a “derogatory Western creation.”
