Red Rain

3

BLOG POST

BY LEA HARMON SUTTER

Travel_Adventures.com

(April 11) The bad news is that Ernesto still has its sights on Le Chat Noir. The hurricane is slow-moving, about fourteen miles per hour, which is even more bad news, because the longer it stays in one place, the more damage it does.

The only good news is that it gives me a little time to find some kind of adventure to write about before I have to duck and hide.

I’m writing this post on my iPad. I can feel the emergency vibes. People are boarding up their windows and pulling their boats onshore. The sky has turned an ugly lead color, and the wind feels heavy and damp.

My hosts, Macaw and Pierre, were reluctant to let me leave the house. I’m not sure they understood that my job is to go out and do risky things so I can write about them.

I’d been in touch (by email) with a woman who lives on Le Chat Noir, named Martha Swann. Martha told me about an island ceremony called Revenir, which is French for “to come back.” She explained that the Revenir ritual is part of a practice called Mains Magiques-Magic Hands. She believed the French traders picked it up somewhere and brought it here with them. Martha wrote that it is a must-see.

I told my hosts I wanted to attend a Revenir ceremony, and they reacted not with horror but with definite disapproval. They both started shaking their heads, as if it would persuade me to drop the idea.

“It’s all a fake,” Macaw insisted. “They put on a show. The priest-he performs it every week.”

“It’s bad for the island,” Pierre agreed. His eyes took on a sadness. “These magic rituals, they make us look foolish. Primitive.”

“Why scare the people away?” Macaw said. “Why not talk about the beauty here? The natural beauty. Not the unnatural.”

“I know it isn’t real,” I said. “I’m not going to write that it’s real. But I think my readers will find it interesting. You know. It’s all about life and death, right? It’s been practiced for hundreds of years. It’s so. . colorful.”

“We don’t want to be colorful,” Macaw said in her red-and-fuchsia dress.

After a lot of begging and pleading and explaining, they finally agreed to find a guide to take me to the ceremony.

He turned out to be a sandy-haired, boyish, tanned young man in khaki cargo shorts and safari jacket, who seemed so shy and spoke so softly I never did figure out what language he was using. I believe his name was Jean-Carl. He always looked away when he spoke to me, as if he was ashamed of his job or where he was taking me.

He drove me in an open jeep over the one single-lane paved road that leads to the center of the island. The road was lined on both sides by amazing cabbage palmettos. Their clusters of long leaves gleamed, even in the darkening light of the sky. Talk about magic! The trees were flowering, the yellow-white blossoms flashing by like tiny lights.

I didn’t see any other car traffic. Jean-Carl parked the jeep in the shade of a clump of palms at the edge of a sandy path, and we began to walk, the soft sand tickling my feet as it flowed over my open sandals.

I tried to ask Jean-Carl questions about what I could expect to see. But again, he seemed embarrassed or else just painfully unsuited to his job. He kept repeating the word scary and shaking his head.

Of course, that only heightened my anticipation. And when we reached a small crowd of people-men and women of indeterminate age in colorful beach caftans and robes-I was ready for my Mains Magiques adventure.