Ghede

The drums have been going for hours and the serious business is finished when the mood in the room turns. A woman at the edge of the dancers stiffens, then loosens, and somebody hands her a battered top hat and a pair of sunglasses with the right lens missing. She takes a bottle of raw cane rum that has had twenty-one hot peppers steeping in it, drinks, and rubs the rest across her face without blinking. Then she starts to tell jokes that would get anyone else thrown out. The dead have arrived, and they are in an excellent mood.

These are the Ghede, the spirits of the dead in Haitian Vodou. They are a family, not a single god, and nobody has ever finished counting them. One reckoning speaks of hundreds. The lists that try to name them never quite match: Gede Nibo, Brav Gede, Gede Masaka, Gede Oussou, Gede Doub, Gede Linto, Gede L’Orage, Gede Ti Malice, and more besides, with new ones always possible, since the dead keep arriving. Over them stand Bawon Samdi, lord of the cemetery, and his wife Gran Brijit. In the most common account Bawon is their father and Brijit their mother. Another has him as the protector who lifted them out of the grave with her help, and a third treats the Bawon and the Ghede as faces of the same power. Every version agrees on the territory. Death, the graveyard and the grave belong to this household.

How they came to be is argued over, and the argument is worth hearing. One line traces the name across the Atlantic to the Gedevi, the old inhabitants of the Abomey plateau in what is now Benin, who were overrun in the seventeenth century by the founders of the kingdom of Dahomey. The conquered Gedevi are said to have been made the kingdom’s gravediggers and keepers of the dead, and many were later sold into slavery and shipped to the French colony of Saint-Domingue, where their name went on doing the same work. The other line says the Ghede have no African home at all. On this reading they are Creole lwa, born on the island itself, the one family of spirits that Haiti made out of its own dead. Both may hold a share of the truth. A name can cross an ocean and still be filled with local graves.

The founding story is short and local. The first man buried in any cemetery becomes its Bawon, and the first woman buried there becomes its Gran Brijit, so every graveyard has its own lord and lady and its own crowd of Ghede under them. Papa Gede is said to be the corpse of the first man who ever died, a short dark figure in a tall hat with a cigar in his mouth and an apple in his hand, waiting at the crossroads for the souls who come his way. Gede Nibo was the first to die by violence. One telling says Bawon and Brijit found him afterwards and adopted him, and he has looked after the young dead and the unburied ever since, lending his voice to people whose bodies were lost under the water and never recovered.

Each has a job. Brav Gede keeps watch at the cemetery wall, holding the dead in and the living out. Gede Masaka digs the graves in a black shirt, white jacket and white headscarf. Gede Oussou wears a jacket with a white cross on the back and is named for his thirst for white rum. Baron Kriminel is the enforcer, remembered as the first killer, and the families of the murdered go to him when they want a wrong answered.

What they look like depends on whose body they borrow, but the wardrobe is fixed. Black, purple and white are their colours. They favour the undertaker’s formal dress, a top hat and tailcoat with a long cane, or else the torn clothes of a beggar or gravedigger. Faces are whitened with powder until they look like skulls. The dark glasses are worn because the dead have come up out of the dark, and the missing lens, by one explanation, leaves an eye free to watch the living world while the other stays on the grave. Their dance is the banda, a fast, hip-driven thing played on drums at a pace that leaves no room for dignity.

That is the point of them. The Ghede are foul-mouthed, greedy and funny. They mock anyone who takes himself seriously, they flirt with everyone in the room, and they eat and drink as though they had been waiting a year for the chance, which they have. The pepper rum is their own recipe and no other spirit can stand it. They tend to turn up at the end of a ceremony, when things have grown solemn, to liven the place up. Death, in this family, has no shame left to lose.

Their great day comes at the start of November, on the feast called Fèt Gede, which falls on All Saints and All Souls. Families scrub and repaint the tombs beforehand. Then the crowds walk to the main cemetery of each town, the largest of them in Port-au-Prince, carrying black coffee, roasted corn, cassava, rum and whatever the dead relative liked best to eat. The air smells of candle wax, hot pepper and spilled alcohol. People in purple and black with chalk-white faces dance the banda between the graves, and the cursing and the laughter go on all day.

Their power follows from where they stand. Having died already, they know what goes on among both the living and the dead, and Papa Gede is said to read minds. They carry souls across. They heal, and they are the last hope when a child is dying, because Papa Gede will not take a life before its time. Since they hold the gate of death they also hold the gate of birth, which is why the same spirits who rule the cemetery are asked for fertility and are so loudly interested in sex. The anthropologist Karen McCarthy Brown, who spent years with a Vodou priestess in Brooklyn, found Gede to be above all a healer who works through humour.

Their limits are real ones too. They do not choose who dies early, and Papa Gede’s refusal to take anyone ahead of schedule binds him as much as it comforts the living. They answer to Bawon and Brijit. They can be fed, flattered and distracted, and a hungry Ghede is a nuisance until someone brings a plate. And they are, after all, dead: they have no bodies of their own, and everything they do in the world of the living they do in borrowed flesh, for as long as the drums last.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who are the Ghede in Haitian Vodou?

The Ghede are a family of lwa, or spirits, in Haitian Vodou who represent the dead. They rule the cemetery and the grave, guide the newly dead to the afterlife, and are also linked with sex, fertility and new life. They are led by Bawon Samdi and his wife Gran Brijit.

What is the difference between Ghede and Baron Samedi?

Ghede is the name of a whole family of spirits of the dead, while Baron Samedi, or Bawon Samdi, is the lord of the cemetery who stands over them. Most accounts make Bawon Samdi the father of the Ghede and Gran Brijit their mother. Other accounts call him their protector, or treat the Bawon and the Ghede as aspects of the same power.

What do the Ghede wear and drink?

The Ghede wear black, purple and white, often with a top hat, a tailcoat or gravedigger’s rags, a cane, a powdered white face and dark glasses with one lens missing. Their drink is raw cane rum steeped with twenty-one hot peppers, which they both drink and rub on their skin. Their dance is a fast drum dance called the banda.

When is Fèt Gede?

Fèt Gede is held at the start of November, on All Saints and All Souls, with the main celebration on 2 November. Haitian families clean the tombs and bring offerings such as black coffee, roasted corn, cassava and rum to the cemetery. The biggest gathering is at the main cemetery in Port-au-Prince.

Where do the Ghede come from?

There are two accounts of where the Ghede come from. One traces the name to the Gedevi people of the Abomey plateau in Benin, who were conquered by the kingdom of Dahomey, made gravediggers, and later enslaved and taken to Saint-Domingue. The other holds that the Ghede are Creole spirits born in Haiti itself, with no African original.

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