“My mother went to Haiti, they did that last part of the ceremony, and then something weird happened,” Timothy Jackson said.
A North Carolina man is searching for answers after his mother died during a Vodou retreat in Haiti.
Dana Jackson, 51, wanted to become a Manbo priestess. A Manbo priestess “is a female ritual specialist in the Haitian Vodou tradition. Like her male counterpart, the Oungan (or Houngan), she performs ceremonies, initiations, healings, and divinations,” says an article on Harvard University’s website.
Vodou is an African religion and comes from the word Fon, meaning “god” or “spirit,” and “originates from the ancient kingdom of Dahomey (modern-day Nigeria, Benin, and Togo),” according to an article about the religion on PBS.org. Alternate spellings of the religion are Vodun and Vodoun, but not Voodoo. The spelling Voodoo is considered a “sensationalist and derogatory Western invention,” the article continues.
Her son, Timothy Jackson, told USA TODAY that this was something she wanted to do and that she had been practicing for several years before traveling to Haiti.
“Four years ago, my mother started doing a little research into the traditional spiritual belief systems of Africa, and Vodou was part of that,” he said. “She was on a path of just researching and practicing, or at least doing her due diligence as far as research goes.”
Jackson said his mother left for Haiti on July 1 and was due to return to the United States on July 26. His mother was traveling with a group of people who had gathered in a house to participate in Vodou rituals.
“The people she went down there with are called Sosyete and I think that means society in the Turkish language and Nago,” Jackson said. “These were not strangers she went down there with. These are people she built a relationship with.”
Jackson said the group recently took a trip together to Boston in June.
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Apart from the Vodou ceremony there was no communication
During part of the Vodou ceremony, Jackson expected not to hear from his mother.
“If you research that part of the ceremony, even just on Google, you’ll find that it’s very sacred and things like that,” he said. “So she sent me a final message on the 13th and said, ‘We’ll talk on the 21st when we go to church tomorrow.'”
Jackson and his mother spoke every day. The lack of communication was nerve-wracking for him, but he wanted to respect his mother’s decision to participate in the ritual. In the last message he received from his mother on July 21, she asked him to “pray for her.”
“I was pretty quiet all week, I was nervous because I couldn’t hear from her and I know this is a very important part of the ceremony,” he said. “On the 21st I didn’t hear from her. I contacted her on WhatsApp at around 5pm. I didn’t get a response.”
Mother does not react after Vodou ceremony; son learns of her death
The next day, Jackson still had no news from his mother and he began to worry.
“I woke up. I’m not going to lie, I was a little panicked because I felt like she would have at least responded to my text message by now,” he said.
On July 22nd, at around 5 p.m., his grandmother brought him the news that his mother had died.
“She told me, ‘Your mother is not coming back from Haiti.’ So I hung up,” he said. “I called her back. I asked her, ‘What did she mean?’ She said, ‘She is not coming back from Haiti. She died.’ I hung up. I called her again.”
After much back and forth between Jackson and his grandmother, he called his grandfather and his grandfather confirmed that his mother had died.
“Something scary happened”
To confirm his mother’s death, Jackson contacted one of the leaders of the group that had traveled to Haiti with his mother. The first question they asked him was, “How much did he know?”
“To be completely honest, at first I thought my mother had traveled to Haiti, the final part of the ceremony was performed there and then something strange happened,” he said.
The person who spoke to him told him that his mother became very ill during the ceremony. They told him that she had fainted. When she regained consciousness, she did not know where she was. When a member of the House asked her where she was, she said she was in Virginia, Jackson said.
However, Jackson said his family has not lived in Virginia for over a year.
Jackson said they also told him they took her to the hospital, where she began having seizures and they suffered a heart attack and a stroke.
“That was the original story,” he said. “They said my mother didn’t bring her medicine. So that was a red flag, because what medicine are you talking about? It sounds like they’re trying to spread a story.”
Jackson was also supposed to receive an update on the location of his mother’s body on August 16, but that has not happened yet.
“I haven’t heard anything,” he said. “I don’t even think the U.S. Embassy got involved or even received the necessary documentation until about four days ago.”
USA TODAY reached out to the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince but did not receive a response prior to publication.
In memory of Dana Jackson
Although Jackson’s mother had him at a young age, her goal was to work hard to give them a better life.
In 1999, Jackson took a job at a technology company in Savannah, Georgia, he said. In her role, his mother would help set up the company’s operations in the state. During their time in Georgia, Jackson recalls, he got his own bathroom, his own bedroom, participated in extracurricular activities and eventually grew closer to his mother.
Years later, he asked his mother why she decided to move.
“Many years later, I asked her, ‘Why did you decide to move there?’ She said, ‘Tim, I needed that time to learn how to be a mother to my son,'” he said.
Another memory Jackson shared was in 2017 when his family took a trip to Las Vegas, Nevada, where the two eventually met rapper Nelly. The rapper eventually turned around and talked to the two before leaving the hotel, Jackson said.
“In Vegas, we were getting ready to check into our hotel and Nelly came out. My mom looked at me and I looked at her and we both ran after him,” he said. “That’s how well we fit together.”
GoFundMe set up for Dana Jackson’s funeral costs
Jackson has set up a GoFundMe account for his mother’s funeral and any other expenses that may arise in the future.
“(The GoFundMe campaign was set up for) funeral expenses and all costs associated with transporting her body,” he said. “I want to do an autopsy. I’ve been quoted a price for that.”
His mother told him how her funeral would be.
“We had a conversation maybe six years ago where she told me she wanted to be cremated and she told me her final wish,” he said.
Dana Jackson was supposed to turn 52 on September 13, Jackson said.
“We don’t know what happened in the last nine days, but whatever happened, my mother did not go to Haiti to return to the United States,” he said.
