VOODOO IS A POWERFUL FORCE in the impoverished nation of Haiti, where Christian doctors and orphanage directors work to erase myths — and end the country’s crippling cycle of need.


LIMONADE, HAITI — The witchdoctor is in.

That’s what the red sash means, says Julien Pierre Antoine, pointing to a tattered cloth tied to a tree branch next to a mud-brick house.

“This place is a voodoo place,” the Church of Christ minister says of Limonade, a community of 69,000 souls in northern Haiti. It’s rumored to be the site where Christopher Columbus spent Christmas in 1492.

Nearly 520 years later, many here practice the religion of their African forefathers, brought as slaves by the French.

Voodoo priests make weekly visits, charging the poor for the promise of healing, prosperity — change for the better — as they attempt to appease the angry spirits responsible for their woes.

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