Captain Hank Bracker Quotes

“A native man in his small wooden boat was hoping to make one last sale. He held up a woodcarving of a Haitian drummer and shouted up that I could have it for only $10. I wasn’t really interested and was ready to walk away when I heard him offer it again, this time for $5.”

“Just as I pulled on the lanyard, I heard a shot go off. It took several moments for me to comprehend what had happened. The cop had shot the man I was bartering with! I could see that it hadn’t been a warning shot as blood came from an obvious wound right between his eyes!”

“At the lodge, we were assigned rooms with real beds instead of the cots we were used to on the ship. Dinner consisted of chicken in a hot tomato and garlic sauce, over rice, with a heap of pickles on the side.”

“The image of the Haitian revolution, and the inflated memory of its excesses — echoed not just in Cuba, but in the United States and Latin America as well — was to hover over Cuba throughout the nineteenth century and beyond, a permanent intimation of what might happen to the white population if faulty political or administrative decisions were made.”

“Life was cheap here and I realized that the old woman’s prediction had come true. I had seen death before leaving Haiti!”

“In the end, the Catholic hierarchy gave up and after a time reached a tacit understanding with them. They now allowed Voodoo drums and songs to be sung in Catholic Church services and ignored what they once called devil worship.”

“As we bounced along the dirt road winding through the hills, I could distinctly hear the rhythm of drums and see fires on the distant mountains. Mrs. Allen, who was with us, explained that in the 1940’s devout members of the Catholic faith considered the Voodoo rites an abomination of their faith.”

“They armed themselves and started to eradicate from Haiti what they considered a cult. The entire thing turned into a war! They burned voodoo temples and shrines, and killed some of the practitioners as well as voodoo priests.”

“No place in Haiti was easy to get to and to drive to their lodge would take a couple of hours, so they sent a van to pick us up. It was already evening and the sun had just set, as we made our way up into the mountains behind Port-au-Prince.”

“Looking at an approaching police boat, I agreed to the deal, and lowered my $5 down to him in a bucket. He ignored the cops, who were ordering him away from the ship using a megaphone, and tied the carving onto the lanyard that, just before, had a bucket attached to it. The police warned him once more, to back away from the ship, but the deal was more important to him.”