What Met Gran Bwa Said

COPYRIGHT 1999 - Mambo Racine Sans Bout Sa Te La Daginen

No reproduction without consent of author


NEW! Perform service to the lwa Grand Bwa yourself! The Grand Bwa Instructional Package offers recordings of songs for Grand Bwa, written information, herbal mixtures, and other items for the service of Grand Bwa. The Non-Initiates' Service for Grand Bwa offers online information.

In the summer of 1999 I was living Haiti, and had a chance to have quite a few conversations with Met Gran Bwa, Master Big Woods. He always announced himself by booming in very brash, masculine tones, "Que lo que paso?" Why he spoke Spanish I don't know, but the border of the Dominican Republic is only about forty miles from where I spoke with Met Gran Bwa and the Dominican side of the frontier is much more heavily forested, so perhaps that is where Met Gran Bwa has gone to live.

Met Gran Bwa is a very loving, big-hearted lwa, who always has a joke and a word of good advice. He personifies vigor and fortitude. Met Gran Bwa often informed us that he had a very nice big stiff penis (bwa in Creole, meaning 'wood', is colloquial expression for the penis). He used to tell us all about how life was when people still lived in Guinea. He sometimes talked also about the early days of the bitasyon, the family land, where he was served. Sometimes it was hard to tell when he was talking about Guinea and when he was talking about the bitasyon. One day my children, the members of the August 1999 kanzo group, were with me as we listened to Met Gran Bwa in the head of our father Yabofai Bon Houngan, and this is what he said:

"You know those people back then, their lives were good! Back then, the banana trees were so plentiful, they would bear right under the bed! The mango trees would push up under the bed at night and bear fruit! You didn't have to get out of bed to eat breakfast.

"The sea was full of fish, not poor like it is now. You could throw in your net and find it too heavy to pull up, you would have to let it back down and let some of the little sardines swim out, so you could take up your net.

"You know what people used to give their children? They used to take banana and let it dry, and beat it and make flour. And then they would mix that with some milk from a cow, or sometimes with casava. Those children, they were never sick! And those people, they used to live to be two hundred years old. You don't believe me? Two hundred, even three hundred years old. Those days will not come again on this earth.

"Children, I beg you. Open your hearts. Love your father and mother. Love each other. I beg you. Open your hearts, so that when you go into the djevo you will be able to receive what is there for you. I beg you, open your hearts."

Met Gran Bwa is a healing presence, and he walks with the lwa Papa Loko. He lives in the forest, the deep woods, and he owns the leaves. He is very mystical. When Papa Loko gives the asson, he does so in Gran Bwa, in the deep woods.

Here is a song for Gran Bwa, and an English translation:

Another says,

Se nan bwa, fey nan bwa ye, Se nan bwa, fey nan bwa ye, Se mwen menm Gran Bwa, M pap montre moun kay mwen, Si m pral montre moun kay mwen, Yap di se nan bwa m rete.

It's in the woods, the leaves are, It's in the woods, the leaves are, It is I Gran Bwa, I won't show people my house, If I go and show people my house, They will say I live in the woods.

When my children were doing their kouche kanzo and I was making a rekouche, Met Gran Bwa came often to visit in the initiatory djevo, with his hearty, encouraging way of talking to us and his entertaining behavior. As the day on which some initiates would go suleliye and take the asson drew closer, his visits became more frequent. While he sat and talked with us, he would share with us herbal infusions in single-distilled rum. He told us salty jokes, and then in the next breath he would make for us a sacred moment, reveal to those of us with the ears to hear some mystery of Guinea or other. He exuded beneficence, energy, and peace.

Gran Bwa got a kick out of Catholics! He thought they were in for a big surprise with their modernized rites incorporating traditional drums.

"You see the little fathers talking with their jaws full of kaka? They are going to get a shock!", laughed Gran Bwa. "Those drums, each one of them has twenty-one different lwa inside it, and one day... they'll COME OUT! That day is coming very soon!" And here Gran Bwa laughed uproariously, rocking back on his chair.

One of my initiatory children, Bon Houngan Ya Sezi, Babalawo Obi Ordum, David Grant of Gary, Indiana, had the good fortune to discover that he has Gran Bwa as the master of his own head! His chante vayan, the song with which he announces himself as a Houngan, is the triumphant tune Gran Bwa Ile Ile. (This song, by the way, became a Haitian pop hit when the group RAM recorded it with electric instruments. That recording is available online, click Aibobo.)

Would you like to meet Met Gran Bwa, Dear Reader? Would you like his beneficent energy to touch you? Email me, Mambo Racine Sans Bout Sa Te La Daginen, and if you like I will take you to Haiti, and straight into Guinea. And also, if you are able right now, go into the deep woods. Walk until you are afraid you won't find your way back, walk until you are just plain scared. Take a tent if you know how to camp, and walk too far to walk back out again for the day, walk so far that you have to sleep out. And then sit down on the ground, and humble yourself, and open your heart. Press your chest against the earth. Pray to Almighty God first of all, and then call Met Gran Bwa, and see what comes to you. And then, if you would be so kind, share it with me! AYIBOBO!

Peace and love,

Mambo Racine Sans Bout Sa Te La Daginen

Return to The VODOU Page.