Day of the Dead
The custom is such that All Saints' Day is celebrated here from the day before by Catholics and all other religions commemorating their departed loved ones. Families go to the cemeteries to lay flowers, as tradition dictates, on the tombs, the graves embellished with lambis conches, to illuminate the graves of those who have gone to the Pays d'Abolay, Basile in Creole, to join Man Moun in the Kingdom of the Dead, these Creole ways of saying la Camarde as we say in French, without naming her, no doubt, so as not to meet her either. It's a real meeting place for families. There are street vendors in the square, where you can buy candles, matches and water just in case. They sell fewer and fewer natural flowers, to prevent mosquito proliferation, and artificial flowers are replacing them. The mayor has thought of making sand available to his constituents. As for the pistachio merchants, they never miss an opportunity to point out that their wares are well roasted in the warmth of their cones. November 2, Day of the Dead, is also the day for planting sweet potatoes. The moon is favorable, they say, but it's mainly to continue respecting the unacknowledged belief that they're underground like the dead, so this day is good for them.
Social practices of grave cleaning
A week before All Saints' Day, the grave cleaners come to clean them. These are their little annual "grave-cleaning" jobs. It seems that recently, with modernity and in certain communes, "employment" has become more organized, with the gravedigger becoming the main shareholder, in charge of canvassing families "unable" to pay him, and delegating the little hands to do the job. He will pay them after withholding his deposit.
Who better than Marie-Line Ampigny to describe the atmosphere? it was fun, yes, fun to watch our " blan-balenn ", the Creole name for candles, burn in feverish anticipation, yes, especially in anticipation of the ball duels made of hot wax known as " caca-bougies ", which flowed like tears of wax, the object of our desires. [...] It was a matter of who could throw the ball, which we realized was burning hot. In this way, we honored our dead: grandfather, grandmother, whose first names we only knew, our brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, all too soon gone to the land of the hatless. The family gathered round, and the children happily tossed their balls around. Candles ooze loosely onto the greyish marble of the graves. My harvest is abundant. I run to join my brave soldiers. [...] We have to shoot at anything that moves. Those in the neighborhoods are against us... [...] The parents are calling us. [...] It was a day of dirty pranks by children practicing precision shooting, but these days, behind glass, candles are, for the most part, protected too. They burn, and wear out, indifferent to the eyes of our children, whose eyes are riveted on soulless consoles, or cell phones that they feverishly worship, in front of the graves of forebears who, since they are now mute, can no longer show their disapproval. [...] The cemetery is about to close [...] We're leaving the city lit up with candles". In D'étranges rumeurs Éditions Orphie, 2013.
At night, the illuminated cemetery, for miles around, instantly brings to life those who lie there. Fortunately, we've lost that rather singular attraction that candle-soot-throwing children wore to this day. As for the lambis, whose conch shells symbolize the ultimate return to ancestral Africa, fishing them has since been banned. No more hydrangea flowers either, because of the mosquitoes, we're obliged to prefer... those that bloom in plastic, with which we can rest easy.
