Every July for the past 150 years, rich, poor and middling Haitians have made the journey from around the country and even abroad to the tiny village of Ville Bonheur and the nearby Saut d’Eau waterfall, 60 miles north of Port-au-Prince.

HOLIDAY’S LEGEND
The three-day holiday honors Our Lady of Mount Carmel, the patron saint of Ville Bonheur (Happy Village), and Erzuli Dantor, a Vodou spirit associated with water and sometimes also portrayed as the Virgin Mary.

The legend behind the pilgrimage started in 1847, when Our Lady of Mont Carmel is said to have appeared on a palm tree and begun to heal the sick. Hoping to end what he considered blasphemy, a French Catholic priest cut down the tree, but worshipers still came. Eventually the church bowed to the inevitable, erected a cross and built a church on the spot.

But the priests could not stop the parallel worship of Erzuli at the nearby falls. While the Catholic and Protestant churches disapprove, many Haitians do not see a dichotomy between their Vodou beliefs and Catholicism and practice both.

Every July, the tiny rural community is transformed into a massive multireligious fair and street party.
In the town, pilgrims clutching rosaries or dressed in Erzuli’s red and blue colors walk from house to house singing and asking for offerings. Noisy street bands play drums and horns made of sheet metal.
Inside the church, the mood is more somber. Hundreds of believers—many wearing the variously colored belts and ropes associated with Vodou spirits—offer candles and flowers as they crowd the alter, clutching passports or photos, crying and praying to a statue of the Virgin Mary.

By the waterfalls, thousands wearing only underwear sang and chanted as they bathed and scrubbed their feet, arms, legs and everything else under the pounding, 100-foot-high waterfalls in the tree-ringed ravine. In addition to making offerings like a bull or a candle, the most important ritual at Saut d’Eau is bathing.