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Chapter 68 - History Revealed

Mid-April

As the warmer weather of Maryland’s spring brought the dogwoods and magnolias into blossom, Tamara’s main projects continued to be the G-force and its applications, and also her collaborations with all of the groups at Hopkins who had been working on brain structure and function based on her MRI-coil design. Most of those collaborations had resulted in research grant applications, and a number of these grants had begun to be funded. Much of her time was spent in weekly meetings with many of those groups as their experimental designs were turned into plans. Several of her collaborators had a number of journal articles in preparation and she was involved with writing up those papers as well.

Several times during the month, Emma and Montern had filled her in on information coming from the unofficial physics “grapevine”—Tamara’s initial experiments on the G-force coils had been replicated by a half-dozen other groups who had confirmed that the G-force effect was real and reproducible and her work was now spawning other research projects using the effect that she had discovered. She had also heard from Emma’s European contacts that, despite the warnings in the patent documents about the instability of a high-efficiency electron-storage circuit device if not assembled under ultra-clean conditions, some accidents had occurred in parts of Europe involving people who had tried to copy the energy-storage device.

“Apparently those people were using your patents and tried to build a version of the device, maybe to try to sidestep your patents,” Emma told Tamara.

“Sorry if people got hurt,” Tamara said. “There’s actually a strong warning in the patent description about the need to avoid dielectric contamination.”

“And relative to that matter,” Emma went on, “EEC Energy had a visit from the military; they sent a bunch of reps and brass to the company to discuss how to use the technology as an explosive. Apparently someone had read about those European accidents.”

“Huh. I don’t see how...” Tamara began.

“Oh, no worries,” Emma chuckled. “When they were told about the basic circuit cost for just the polymer sheets, they got hesitant. Then Dr Stafford, our CEO, you’ll recall, told them that the device is totally stable unless impurities somehow get into the polymer sheets during assembly. When he told them that impurities in the circuit matrix make it inherently unstable and the assembly could blow up at any random time, just by being handled, they began to lose interest. One of the brass asked if the device could be made stable and Stafford told them it could and that’s the version used in our device. When it’s stable, it can’t be made to explode.”

“There could be ways, but I won’t go there. The world doesn’t need more weapons. So our security precautions are working?” Tamara asked. “No sign that anyone’s able to reverse-engineer it?”

“Looks that way. And the Cambridge energy farm is about to go on line at the end of the month. I won’t be there—don’t really need to be. Besides, that’s when we have your orals scheduled.”

Tamara’s last formal physics class was ending this month and her oral exam for her doctorate would be on the last Monday. The oral exam was a free-form question-and-answer session that’s typically intended for the candidate to demonstrate their ability to conduct the research necessary for the doctoral degree. Ordinarily, the candidate would present their proposed dissertation research plan to their faculty committee and demonstrate their knowledge; typically the questioning ranged widely across the academic field. In Tamara’s case, however, she was already working on her dissertation research; her work on the G-force coil had turned into validating her dark matter and energy theory. Her committee had already given her their approval for that topic, so the part of the oral exam related to her ability to do the research was moot. In her orals, the examiners would be exploring her knowledge of other aspects of physics that were less closely related to her research project.

She still had about a half-dozen experiments to do; some of those had been suggested by the guest physicists at the beginning of the year, so she would be spending some time during the coming months on those details. But she had other summer plans in the works too; ones involving the commercialization of her inventions.

~~~~

Greta was overjoyed with her new empathic sense and she was learning how to affect others’ emotions too.

As she told Tamara in a mid-April phone conversation, “I’m getting more sensitive every day. But it troubles me also, because I can now sense how bad it must have been for Peter to have that ability unfiltered. And as an adolescent too, when all those new emotions are so intense. How he kept his sanity is amazing.”

“Yes it is, but you can see how that reveals his internal strength,” Tamara told her. “How about projecting your emotions? Has that come yet?”

“Yes, but it’s scary in a way. I don’t want to go overboard and get on a power trip. I really see what you mean about being careful not to influence people just because you can.”

“There certainly are people who use their emotional power to influence or even control others,” Tamara observed. “I’m virtually certain that it’s an unconscious ability in most everyone who has it. Some use it in good ways but many more use it for personal gain of some kind. Those are the people who get written about in the history books—the not-good ones, I mean. Say, Mom and I plan to have a meeting with the president soon about our Haiti project and we’re both concerned about the criminal violence there lately. Mom was gonna talk to you about that.”

“Yes, I heard about the civil unrest there and we’ve spoken with each other about that,” Greta remarked. “She said that she told you something about your African ancestors and about an idea she came up with.”

“She told me a lot. How much did she share with you about her idea?”

“Not very much. Just about her Ghana contact and setting up a possible African peacekeeping group in Haiti,” Greta told her.

“Okay. So here’s the basic idea. When I was in London at the knighthood ceremony, one of the kids I met, her grandparents work for the African Union and they’re stationed in Accra, Ghana. Through my contact, Mom got in touch with the grandparents and they’re collaborating now.”

“Right. That part I know.”

“So as part of their work, the Hadads, that’s their name, Malik and Saja, need to travel to Togo, Benin, and Nigeria a fair amount. They learned a lot about the Vodou religion as it’s practiced throughout that area.”

“That area is its origin, as I recall, right?” Greta asked.

“Yep. It’s called Vodoun locally in Benin and it goes back at least hundreds of years, even before the Dahomey kingdom was formed in the 1700s. It’s a common, completely normal religion in Benin, Ghana, Togo, and western Nigeria, and is practiced locally along with Islam and Christianity. In many cases, some of the practices of all those religions have become a bit merged. In Benin, Vodoun’s recognized as an official religion and forms of it are observed by about 40 percent of the people. As it is in Haiti, it’s a religion where natural spirits are venerated and ancestors are revered.”

“I know somewhat about the cultures of western Africa—their cultural anthropology, that is,” Greta told her. “Not the religions per se. The indigenous people in that region are the Fon, Edo, and Yoruba. Igbo too. There is some limited evidence that at least a portion of the Edo people have roots which go back to migrants from the Nile River valley. Those migrants settled the region from Togo to Nigeria and in the eighth century, the Edo established the Kingdom of Benin. But there are many Edo people who believe that they have lived in their current location for at least two thousand years and there are many historical artifacts which tend to support this claim.

“The migrant claim can also be supported by historical evidence; some of which can be linked to the kingdom’s rulers. Dahomey was supposedly first ruled by the Ogisos, or the ‘gods of the sky,’ and that monarchy shared many similarities both religiously and politically with dynastic Egypt. I recall reading that the Benin Empire, located in southwestern Nigeria, existed as early as 1440 and was populated by the Edo people.

“What is very interesting, however, is a cultural commonality that spans the whole north African continent and more. Somehow the idea of a hermaphrodite creator god appears in Egypt, Greece, Mesopotamia, and it’s even suggested in the Bible. So we know of Egypt’s Tatenen; Agdistis of ancient Greece, Rome, and Anatolia; and the Sumerian Ninsianna. They all are typically viewed as androgynous or hermaphrodite beings who were somehow involved with creation or sustaining the world. And in chapter one of the Bible, where one version of the creation of mankind is described, the wording can be interpreted to say, ah, I need to think of exactly how the Hebrew is translated. It goes, basically, ‘So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.’ Many scholars point to that wording as meaning that Adam and Eve were created as a hermaphrodite, an idea that was very popular around that time, as shown by Plato’s dialogue, the Symposium, which was written about two hundred years after scholars believe chapter one of the Bible was written.

“And the same kind of hermaphrodite god appears in western Africa’s mythologies; for example, your mom mentioned that the creator god-goddess in Dahomean Vodou is a hermaphrodite. Could that idea have come from the Nile valley migrants? It’s possible. But the hermaphrodite idea may actually be universal, since it also appears in Norse mythology. My point is that there appear to be many ancient cultural ties which link the Middle East with western Africa.”

“Hmm. That information gives me something to think about, so thanks. It may tie in with some thoughts I’ve been considering.”

Later, Tamara spoke to Nadine. She mentioned her conversation with Greta.

Nadine replied, “That’s a good background about our ancestral homeland, dear. So I spoke to Saja Hadad about their experiences in Benin and she told me that they’ve gotten in touch with the leaders of a really strong community in southern Benin. It turns out that many residents there are descendants of some of the nobility, as it were, in the Kingdom of Dahomey. Those groups live in villages around Abomey, which was the capital of the Kingdom of Dahomey from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries and they have a very strong community.

“When she told her contacts there that she was working with a priestess from Haiti, they got very excited; it appears that they view the Haitians as their long-lost cousins, which I suppose we actually are. You know that they have an annual Vodou holiday celebration? It’s actually a national holiday.”

“Do they still follow the same rituals there, do you know?” Tamara asked.

“I’m not sure; some of the lwa that Saja mentioned have different names, but some names are closer. Our Haitian version is heavily influenced by Catholicism so there was some evolution, particularly in many of the Petwo rites, which are entirely Haitian.”

“Has she visited there?”

“She has. She told me about visiting two restored palaces; they’re now historical museums. There were about twelve palaces in the city but the other ten are in ruins now. I think the area would feel very much like Haiti now; French is the official language and Fon, Yom, and Yoruba have national-language status. Actually, she said that Fon is the one most widely spoken.”

“So she could still communicate okay?”

“Oh yes. She’s fluent in French and almost everyone in the cities speaks it—a little, at least. So she tells me that among the people she’s spoken to, they are all very interested in Haiti, particularly after the earthquake ten years ago. In fact, the Benin government sent a large contingent of aid workers back then. So I asked her, given the social problems now, if she thought that their government could help now somehow, like the peacekeepers the African Union arranged with the U.N. to send. She thought that it could be a possibility. So I’ll ask Gerston about that when we meet.”

They went on to discuss the Haiti project that Nadine was working on and how her collaborators and their students were coping with the social problems there.

Mid-May

In mid-May, Tamara heard from Denise that she and Kevin had accepted their Westphalia offers.

She told Tamara, “Gerston wants Kevin to be part of his institute; he’s offered Kevin a fellowship to study for his doctorate, and Kevin can use his connection with the Coris Foundation as part of his program. And I’ve been offered a full-ride for Westphalia’s MD-PhD program. I plan to do a psychiatry specialty plus do neuroscience research and they have a good neuroscience department there.”

“That’s great; then you’ll be our neighbors here. Westphalia’s only about ten miles from where my parents live. Are you gonna live on campus?”

“No, we’ll look for a house to rent; we don’t care for apartments and wouldn’t ever consider campus housing—don’t want to live with other students, actually. Not that we’re snobs or anti-social; we don’t want the distractions of carousing students. Here in Atlanta, we live in my mom’s house. Even when we lived in London, we had a row-house flat, nowhere near the universities we were attending. So what are your plans this summer? We’re planning to move up there in July so if you’re around, we can see each other.”

“Wow, nice. Mom and I plan to go to Haiti in June. It’s part of her research project for the Columbia Institute, and my own part is economic development there. We’re meeting with President Gerston—remember the agreement we made at the knighthood ceremony? We’re gonna get some details settled with him and the State Department.”

“You go, girl! So you’ll be back in July then.”

“That’s the plan. I’m involved in setting up two companies to handle the development of my inventions and the lawyers are busy with real estate people for good locations for them... say, Peter’s grandfather is in real estate and his outfit found my parents’ home. He really ‘knows people,’ as they say—he has good connections. I’ll give you his contact info, unless you already know of someone.”

“We don’t, so that would be nice. Kevin was going to ask his North Carolina lawyer friend for suggestions, but checking with Peter’s grandfather sounds good to me.”

“And in August,” Tamara continued, “for most of the month, Peter’s whole family vacations at their family’s resort. It’s usually a big group that gets together and they’re totally fun.”

“Nudist resort, right?”

“Yep. Peter’s family are part owners and have a house and some cabins in the resort. The house is nice, it’s a four-bedroom with a huge great room. You mentioned that you guys went to a resort with Cindy, right?”

“Oh yeah. We sure did. And a lot of the ideas for the Avery Program came from those nudist resort visits.”

Tamara chuckled. “Now that’s a story I’d like to hear. Peter and Barbara would want to hear it too, in fact. I hope you can come to the resort for at least part of the time in August. Maybe even have Cindy and Tom visit too. We give special rates for close friends of the co-owners.”

“Yeah, I’m sure we can do that. Listen, I need to run, but Kevin and I’ll be in touch and let you know the details of when we’re moving.”

“Sounds good; congrats on your acceptances to Westphalia and I can’t wait till we can get together again.”

~~~~

The following week was Tamara’s and Nadine’s meeting with Gerston. He had been amused when they had contacted him back in April to set up the meeting. His appointments secretary had come to him with Tamara’s request, so he had called her.

When she answered, he greeted her and asked, “I’ll bet you want to start collecting on our London agreement; am I right?”

“Yes, sir. And Mom will be putting in place the social and cultural piece of her Columbia Institute project and I’m doing my own economic part. We want you to do the political part, and Haiti’s a tough country, given its political past and current problems. That’s the main thing we want to discuss. It might be good to include some State Department specialists on the area and maybe our OAS rep too.”

“That’s about what I figured; my sources tell me that you’re close to developing some commercial applications of your discoveries,” Gerston replied.

“True,” Tamara responded. “And the companies involved will be based in the good old U.S.A., just as you asked.”

He laughed. “Okay then. Payback time for me. I’ll get a group together for the third week in May, then. And you’re planning your Haiti visit in June, my note says.”

“That’s the plan. Later in the summer, when it’s hottest there, it’s not easy to get important work started and June avoids the hurricane season.”

“Sounds good, Tamara. My staff will keep you and Nadine informed of the exact date and time and also of who’s coming. Is that it, then? I gotta go, my next appointment is here.”

“Sure, Mr Gerston, and thanks.”

She disconnected and continued to work on her presentation to the president and on the economic plan she was visualizing for Haiti.

~~~~

When Tamara and Nadine arrived at the White House for their meeting, there were a number of familiar people and several people whom they hadn’t met. Evan Masters was there with a deputy, a person whom Nadine had met on her prior visits to the State Department. Tamara and Nadine had heard that a CIA representative would be there and Nadine wasn’t surprised to see that it was Wilbur Zane. As he told her when they greeted each other, he was now an assistant director in the Directorate of Analysis.

“You two are planning to go to Haiti and we’ve had reports of problems involving U.S. visitors there lately. State can fill you in,” he told her.

Commerce had sent a representative and the U.S. permanent representative to the OAS, Ambassador Jose Estrada, was present. The current U.S. ambassador to Haiti would attend by video. Nadine opened the meeting with a cultural presentation. She wanted to extend the work of her dissertation research, mothers teaching daughters about the mix of their culture’s social topics, into including ideas about entrepreneurship. She, together with a focus group from the Columbia Institute, had developed an initiative for sponsoring micro-loans and her primary mission on this trip was to plan methods to recruit manbos to serve as loan and grant resource people. They would provide the information to their congregations on what the micro-loan program was all about and who to contact to apply for the loan.

She had also developed plans for a grass-roots educational initiative using Columbia Institute grant funds to support ten recent Haitian education graduates to recruit people in the countryside to develop a cadre of lay teachers to work in the outlying villages. These lay teachers would receive a small stipend and would teach children in the lower elementary grades about basic life skills. Most of those plans had been finalized; she had developed them together with collaborators from two Haitian universities and they had presented their plans during video consultations with the relevant Haitian ministries. This visit would mark the start of her field work with the faculty at the two universities which were collaborating in the project.

When she asked for comments, Masters told the group, “State has committed some funds in support of the education project through our foreign aid programs and several charitable foundations have also signed on. We’re also waiting to hear from the U.N. The United Nations Development Program specifically targets projects like this one.”

Ambassador Estrada also commented. “There’s a lot of interest at the OAS in seeing how successful this project will be, especially from many of the smaller states of Central America, The OAS can’t commit much in the way of direct funding but might have other resources, such as personnel for educational support, that several states could provide.”

Tamara’s presentation came next. Her idea was to try to help Haitians develop a basic manufacturing industry, similar to how countries in southeast Asia had grown a strong manufacturing infrastructure in the period following the U.S. conflict in Vietnam. To do that, she had her attorneys and university advisors assemble a plan to establish an endowment for a technical school there to set up an advanced engineering technology program. The program would specifically train technicians to staff a manufacturing facility which she would build in the country. Preliminary talks with the Haitian government had been very positive but Tamara knew that soon, hands seeking graft would start to appear. She was also aware that when a manufacturing operation was running, there was a possibility of its being nationalized, so steps would need to be taken to make nationalization very painful for the government.

After the presentations, Masters from the State Department spoke.

“These seem to be excellent plans, Dr and Miss Alexandre. But I’m sure you’re aware that Haiti is becoming an increasingly difficult place for foreigners now—Haitian citizens too. They’ve always had occasional problems with kidnappings for ransom there, but in the past year, the incidence of kidnappings has increased greatly. Two U.S. citizens were abducted in the past year; it’s dangerous to travel in the countryside now. We’ve issued a do-not-travel advisory for Haiti. There’s also been a major increase in gang violence in cities, including in Port-au-Prince, and ordinary citizens have organized self-defense or vigilante groups to try to defend their communities. These problems have been caused because the government doesn’t have enough police resources to maintain basic law and order.”

“Kidnappings have even happened on highways between the larger cities,” Zane added. “Gangs have been watching for travelers and there have been several incidents on main roads lately.”

“I’ve heard about the situation from my Haitian collaborators,” Nadine answered. “Tamara and I have discussed the problem and she has a thought about this and then I have a suggestion.”

Tamara looked at the group. “You’ll recall, I’m sure, the instability from several years ago that involved a rogue Vodou priestess named Vanessa.”

People around the table nodded.

“She was putting into place a group to take control of the government and had accumulated a fair amount of money as well as supporters, many coming from within their government. After her death, those of her supporters who could be identified were purged and this left a vacuum of power in many ministries and in the police too, which the government never effectively dealt with. I think that the problem that underlies the current situation may be the figurehead that Vanessa planned to install as their king—several years ago, when my mother was in Haiti finalizing her affairs, she was given a redacted extract of Vanessa’s journal. That journal mentioned some of Vanessa’s plans. There was nothing written in there about any plan to set up a king, though, unless of course it had been redacted.

“But she had other information directly from Vanessa, who had spoken to Mom a few weeks before we had to flee Haiti. At that time, she bragged about how she planned to overthrow the government. I believe that the person that Vanessa had in mind to be the king—according to Vanessa, he’s from the Duvalier family—is behind this current increase in violence. Possibly he’s united some of the gangs or has convinced them to act together to cause instability and turmoil in the country, perhaps to allow him to orchestrate his own takeover. All the signs point to something like this happening.”

“That’s actually a very strong possibility,” Zane commented. “That’s an idea that the CIA has been exploring right now. Thanks to what Dr Alexandre told us when she arrived in the U.S. about ten years ago and schooled us then on her culture, the CIA has since increased our research capabilities about Haiti and has been monitoring conditions in the country closely since this latest instability began.”

The U.S. ambassador to Haiti continued speaking then.

“One of the major difficulties with outside governments helping with the population here is that about 85 percent of the population speak only Haitian Kreyòl but many do understand a little French. Kreyòl is spoken nowhere else, except in the expat communities. That makes for a real cultural divide in the Caribbean, even involving the Dominican Republic, the country that shares this island. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of distrust and animosity between the two countries over many historical issues. Haitians still haven’t forgotten the atrocities of 1937 that Rafael Trujillo, the Dominican president and dictator at that time, committed against both Haitians and intermarried Dominicans living both in the D.R. and inside the border region of Haiti. He ordered the army to slaughter as many as 15,000 people—or possibly more; the true number is unknown—on the pretext that they were smugglers and cattle rustlers, but in truth, his intent was to kill as many people of African ancestry as possible.”

“This is so true,” Nadine responded. “The animosity continues still. There’s no free passage from Haiti to the D.R.; one needs to get a permit in advance to cross the border. And the physical differences between the two countries are stark. Flying over the island of Hispaniola, one quickly sees that the Haitian countryside looks brown while the D.R. side is green. Much of the reason is a result of the geology and the prevailing winds—first, Haiti is more mountainous and has been systematically deforested in the past for its lumber for building and, before the use of petroleum for energy began, making charcoal. So the erosion there is extreme. And second, the prevailing winds are easterly, reaching the D.R. before Haiti. So unlike the D.R., agriculture in Haiti is difficult. This country can never be reformed from the top down. Reform must start by enabling its citizens.”

“Okay, Mom,” Tamara spoke. “People, this is our vision to bootstrap the country. My mom’s ideas for cultural stability and education and my ideas for economic development are our contributions. But the biggest current problem is security. The U.N. removed its peacekeeping force in, ah, 2016, I think, saying that Haiti was recovering. That was far from true, and it’s gotten much worse now, especially given what I told you that I think has happened.

“So, Mr President, you made a deal with me; I’m delivering my part by setting up a few industries in the U.S. based on my gadgets. I’m gonna give you the political part, sir. I’m not sure that we want the U.N. back running the show; the last time they came here—after the earthquake they brought cholera to Haiti and that was a disaster then—and the country was only recently declared cholera-free. Mom’s collaborator in Ghana has developed some contacts with a number of influential people in Benin and Togo, perhaps even Nigeria. The people of those nations are very close culturally and religiously to the Haitians. There are maybe 400 Beninese peacekeepers serving with the U.N. now, they were just recently in Mali. Togo can provide another thousand.

“What we’d like to see is getting a cadre of west African security forces to come to Haiti and first, supplement the woefully inadequate police there and second, set up a crash course in effective policing. Possibly recruit Benin and Togo citizens who have military or police training to serve as an auxiliary police force to help the Haitian government. Their similar culture and French language will make them more acceptable to Haitians than using western forces. The methods and logistics should be whatever works best for the Haitians.

“Above all, we need to keep away from the idea that the U.S. is interfering with the country. I don’t want a repeat of the specter of Granada or the Nicaraguan Iran Contra affair—or earlier, the U.S. Cuban mess or its interference with the D.R. or Panama. Put the Monroe Doctrine to rest permanently. And help us pull this terribly poor country out of its economic distress.”

Gerston glared at Tamara for a second and then smiled. “It’s a tall order, Tamara. Do you think you could do your part in getting the Haitian government to accept foreign policing aid? They did allow the U.N., but that was following several disasters—hurricanes, an earthquake...”

“Well, sir, this is a social disaster, isn’t it?”

“Ah. Yes it is. Well said. Nadine, you know that you have full U.S. ambassadorial credentials, right?”

“That’s true, Dr Gerston, I do. But it’s best not to push that in their ministers’ faces. I’ve seen how leery most are about dealing with foreign diplomats. I get much more ‘street cred’...” she made finger quotes, “from being known as the priestess who stood up to Vanessa, actually.” She grinned. “And I can always threaten to put a voodoo hex on them.”

Everyone laughed at that.

“Seriously, since I know the culture so well and have many contacts, it shouldn’t be necessary to flaunt my diplomatic status. My plans—and my daughter’s too—are looking ahead five years or more. Any significant manufacturing facility couldn’t be built sooner; besides, we’d need to train the workers. And set up smaller pilot facilities to build skills. Just think—even the wealthiest communities currently get power only for part of the day. We’ll be creating the infrastructure for more industries and the people to work in them. And we can use what we learn along the way to help other developing countries too. That was your idea in setting up the Columbia Institute, right, sir?”

“A big piece of it, yes,” Gerston answered. “And achieving economic stability goes a long way to reducing hunger, crime, and warfare. If only someone could figure out what to do about religious fanaticism. That’s the world’s really huge social problem.”

The meeting was essentially ended; Nadine had some records and correspondence to discuss with Masters and she told the ambassador on the video that she’d be in touch with him within the week about her visit. Masters told her that he would be assigning a team of Diplomatic Security Service agents to her and Tamara so that they’d always have two agents with them. Then the group all began to depart.

Gerston pulled Tamara aside. “I heard that Kevin and Denise have accepted Westphalia’s offer to study here. I can’t wait to see how this little group of you youngsters will work together; you’re all impressive as hell...”

“We’ve got some general ideas, Mr Gerston, and there’s a few more recruits we’re gonna add. It’ll be a couple of years, but I hope you’ll like what we think we’ll be doing when we all get going. No promises, though, but Kevin is a magician about figuring out how to get things done.”

“So true. Well, thanks for the update but no thanks for all the work you’re making for me.”

Tamara grinned at him. “C’mon, sir. You know you love it.”

“Ha ha. You got me there.”

Gerston reached to shake her hand but Tamara gave him a quick hug instead.

“I think we’ll work well together,” she said softly, winking at him and then she walked away as Gerston looked at her in admiration, shaking his head.

Tamara and Nadine left to return to Nadine’s home. They needed to plan for their Haiti trip and Tamara would stay overnight.

~~~~

The following morning, when Tamara awoke, she recalled her dreams and tears began streaming down her cheeks. She found her mother in the kitchen preparing breakfast and ran to hug her.

“What’s wrong, darling?” Nadine asked, surprised and concerned.

“It was one of those dreams that wasn’t a dream; it was a memory of Granmanman’s that came as a dream. I guess my talking about going to Haiti and Haiti’s problems made it come out,” Tamara said, wiping her eyes.

“Something bad? I hope not,” Nadine asked.

“It’s about Granmanman and not bad. Sad though. It’s about your papa. You said you never knew much about him, other than that Granmanman told you he was a good man but that they couldn’t live together.”

“Oh dear, yes, she never wanted to speak of him. She always got emotional when I asked so I stopped asking. Is your ... ah ... memory about him?”

“It is. Let’s sit; this will be hard ‘cause the memory is filled with much sorrow, but more nostalgia than real sadness.”

“Mezanmi ... go on then,” Nadine said as they went to a sofa in the living room.

“I’ll just jump to the heart of what’s in the memory and then tell you the details, okay?”

“Please, no suspense, darling.”

“So your father is actually a Beninite and a direct descendant of a Dahomey kingdom priest...”

Nadine gasped, her hand at her mouth.

“That’s what’s in Granmanman’s memory, Manman. He was part of the royal family—your dad’s ancestor, that is. The memory I have says that the family line goes back thousands of years and Granmanman’s maternal ancestors do as well, so our families have had priests and priestesses in them forever.”

“Yes, the maternal part I know. Manman Tamara told me of our whole lineage; the written part goes back to before about 1500 and an oral part, which she put on paper, for even longer. How they as slaves were able to keep that memory seems amazing to me.”

“Her memory tells me that those ancestral records were sacred.”

“That seems obvious. So what are the details? How much is in her memories?”

“Lots, but much is hazy, like what you recall from when you wake up from a dream. But I recall the important parts. I need to call Granmanman by her name now, Tamara, otherwise I’ll get confused, ‘cause it’s her that I’ll be talking about.”

Nadine nodded.

“So Tamara David’s parents sent her to Benin after she was kanzo for her mom. She was just past her eighteenth birthday, and her family had the tradition of sending their oldest daughter to Benin for advanced study. She was their only surviving child. Apparently the David family had some wealth because they had been doing this since about 1840.”

“Oh my, I never knew...” Nadine sighed.

“‘Cause Granmanman wanted a Western education for you first, Manman. She was planning for you to go there after you graduated. So to continue. Tamara was sent there to study the ancient techniques of the manbos and oungans with the traditional Rada practitioners in Tanve, a little village just outside Abomey. Greta had told me that was the seat of the Kingdom of Dahomey. Tamara was supposed to be there for two years, but about fifteen months into her visit there, her mentor was asked to conduct a fertility ritual for a well-to-do couple who were having problems conceiving.

“The memories here are confused, but it seems that this was a very hands-on ritual and Tamara participated. Enthusiastically, my memories tell me. She had fallen in love with her mentor, but he was fifteen years older and already had two wives—that was, and still is, common in that culture. Anyway, Tamara became pregnant. The folks in her village and all of the surrounding villages, which had close bonds, loved Tamara as one of their own, and persuaded her to marry her mentor.”

“Mezanmi ...”

“She had a tribal marriage and became one of his wives then, and intended to stay, but when she contacted her parents, they first gave reluctant approval but then mentioned that their illnesses had worsened. They had contracted tuberculosis, which was endemic in Haiti, perhaps the year before. So Tamara contacted friends of her parents who told her that they had recently become very ill and needed more care than they were able to get.”

“Oh, this is so sad... I never knew... such a story,” Nadine was weeping now.

“I know. Telling it is hard for me ‘cause I feel the emotions inside me. So Tamara had to return to Haiti to try to take care of her parents; her husband and sister wives urged her to do it ‘cause they saw how sad she was after learning about them. She had a hard trip back, being three or four months pregnant, but she did return and was able to care for her parents. Her memories about this are about how careful she was to prevent infecting herself. But her parents were so weakened by their illnesses that they died within two years of her return. You were her baby, Manman, and you were less than two years old when they passed away.”

“What a sad story. Recall any other parts?”

“Just snatches. One is very important, though, and I’ll come to that. First, her drums...”

“Ah, she cherished them. I’m so glad that I have them now.”

“Yes, well, they were her wedding gift from the Benin villages. They were well over a hundred years old, too.”

“Mezanmi... no wonder she treasured them so.”

“She tried to keep in touch with her husband but he died; she doesn’t know how, when you were maybe five or six. And finally, I know you have her asson...”

“Yes, she had it hidden in her ounfò in a secret place together with all of the other artifacts from our ancestors. After she disappeared, I went there and got everything I could find, the stuff that femèl chen Vanessa hadn’t stolen.”

“Inside the asson, Tamara hid a bank deposit key and ownership papers. A memory I have is that she did something legal to keep the bank from confiscating the box. Maybe that’s in the asson too.”

“Oh, this is such news... I’m overwhelmed,” Nadine sighed. “Let me go get the asson.”

Tamara waited impatiently for her mother to return.

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