Transcript:Ruhiyyih Khanum/Talk with pioneers in Petionville 1981

Transcript of: Talk with pioneers in Petionville, Haiti 15 May 1981 by Ruhiyyih Khanum

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[0:07] [Man speaking] I would like to know something about beating children as a punishment at school. How universal is what ‘Abdu’l-Bahá says?

[0:13] Well I don't know anything about beating children at school, but I do know that the word has been mistranslated into English because I don't, what have they put in English, Violette? Spanking? [Violette: Yes]. You see, in Persian the word that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá used I understand is beating. Beating is very heavy. Beating is a really heavy, cruel punishment. But spanking is you know, [Spanks] "Don't do that again. I told you not to." You see? It's quite a different kind of a thing. And they have taken the word beating and put it into spanking in English. And I think that this is really not the correct meaning of the original word because, although we certainly shouldn't beat children because that could have a very, very detrimental effect on them, and is unnecessary bullying and heavy punishment, I don't see how parents can really bring a child up from birth to I don't know what and not even give it a spanking or a spank. Let's put it that way, or a little tap or a slap or something. Now how that would apply in school, I really don't know. I wouldn't be in the position to judge. I'm not a school teacher. I'm not an educator. I never had any children of my own. I really don't know how to apply it.

[1:46] [Man speaking] Well in Haiti parents and also teachers used to take their belts and then....

[1:53] Well in other words they really beat them. I'm certain I don't think you could beat.... And I know in Scotland and in England, different school systems, they whip them on the hand, which could be very painful and a real lash, you see. But as I say, I don't know. I think that you've got to have discipline and you have to have some system of reward and punishment that applies to the child and that the child understands whether it's in school or whether it's inside the home. But the answer to that question, I really don't know.

[2:31] [Man speaking] Thank you.

[02:33][Woman speaking] Can I just say something on that? I have lots of problems in my classroom with discipline, and I've tried anything. I tried reward systems. I tried name down. I tried everything except what you call a slap or spanking. Until finally I decided I was at my last, finished, that was about five months later, I couldn't take it anymore because their discipline was so bad, they weren't listening to me at all. They knew that I would do nothing to them, you know to hurt them. So finally one day I took out the ruler. And I said anybody who disobeys, who's impertinent, walks around, gets, you know, [imitates slapping], on the hand. I did that for three days. I have no discipline problems ever since then. And I did not hit the children. Now I just threatened, "Okay I want you to be quite, if you don't keep quite I'll have to take my ruler out and you will be slapped". I'm not saying that... I never did want to do it, you know. But it worked. And I don't think I hurt the child that much. Like I said I never did want to do it, but it did work.

[03:47] Well I think that, I'm not sure about how as I say you should apply that principle, but I do think that if the Baháʼís will read what it says in the Gleanings on the subject of liberty, which is a synonym for freedom, it's only one word in the original and Shoghi Effendi with his beautiful English chose liberty rather than freedom. And they're synonyms. And there's only the original word in Arabic. It's freedom or liberty, you see, or whatever the word is. But I think that if you read what Bahá’u’lláh says about it, I mean more powerful than that He never could be. It's unbelievable what He says on the subject of the dangers of freedom. And then you take ‘Abdu’l-Bahá's teachings about training children, which is the same as the biblical thing. As the twig is bent, the tree will grow, you see. It's exactly the same thing, to train them, to prune the fruit trees otherwise you won't get any fruit and so on. And then you see societies in which somehow or other they seem to have some internal discipline inside the home. And then you go to North America where the children are unbelievably undisciplined and impolite and have no power of keeping still. Perhaps that's partly the food they eat and the additives they get, I think there's a great deal in that. But this certainly, according to my understanding, isn't the way to bring up children in the Baháʼí Faith.

[05:21] [Woman speaking] I have a question, Rúhíyyih Khánum, completely different from that subject. It's a subject on pioneers hoping, in a country like third World country like this one, where Baháʼís, local Baháʼís come into the Faith with the background of the system of the country, which is everybody's a chief and as soon as they have a title, they rule everybody. How do we pioneers who come from different backgrounds or ideas can help the local Baháʼís to eliminate the old world order ideas of a dictatorship, even within the Baháʼí Faith, and ruling or that kind of a thing?

[6:03] Well I don't think that the Baháʼís, I don't know anything about Haiti, but I don't think that the Baháʼís that I've seen in developing countries like Africa have any wrong ideas about dictatorship or anything. I mean, to be the teacher of another human being is something that is enjoined in the Faith. You are supposed to teach the Cause of God, and this term of spiritual mother and father is used by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, and it's very, very strong. It's an eternal bond. When I was born, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá said to my mother or wrote her I don't know which, that I pray that you will not only be her physical mother, but that you will be her spiritual mother because this is the eternal bond. Physical bond is an accidental one, but the spiritual bond is an eternal one. But then this means that to be the spiritual mother of a person or a spiritual father of a person is tremendously important, you see. But what's that got to do with dictatorship or a ruling class or anything? This is the normal relationship to those who teach us. Look at the words of the Master about being a pioneer, leaving your country, going to another land. It's a tremendously great privilege, and it's also a position, like all positions. Let's take a position if you like in the sense of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. He says, "My station is the station of servitude. I am the servant of the servants of God." This is the station that He chose for Himself, and He's our example. So let us take this as our example, too, but I don't... I think that the Baháʼís, because they have an administrative order, an administrative system, think that they can't have any room for personality, they can't have spiritual mothers and fathers, that they can't have some person that they turn to. It doesn't make sense. We have both. The Spiritual Assemblies and National and so on. This is the, eventually, government of the future, the way society will be run. How it will evolve, we don't know, but that's what it's going to be. Whereas the teachers and protectors of mankind are an entirely different institution. This is the institution of what was the Hands and is now the Counselors, the Board members and the Assistants. This is something entirely different, and strangely enough it's appointive, it's from the top to the bottom, the others are from the bottom to the top, elected, you see. And I think that in our desire to perfect the administrative institution and give them our full support and recognition and especially the pioneers constantly being urged to build up assemblies, you know, and maintain assemblies and get the group to become an assembly and so on, that we forget that there is the other thing which is the relationship of a parenthood, protection, teaching, loving the person.

[9:19] I've often heard pioneers say things that really, there I could have spanked them, great joy. [Laughter]. And they say, "Well, it doesn't make any difference. We'll go away and somebody else will come." And it's a very cruel statement because in villages, for instance, in Africa where they have taught the Faith, the pioneer or the couple or whoever it is they become the mother and father of the community. They are really the rallying point for their children who have become Baháʼís, you see. And then they ask these little young Baháʼís who adore them, if they're worthy of it, because of their services and because of their spirit, they say, "We will send you another pioneer. Well alright, I'll send you another father. I'll send you another mother." Don't have any feeling of personal responsibility towards these people that they brought into the Faith. I don't see that in the Baháʼí teachings. Really, I don't.

[10:27] [John speaking] You said the other day to me while I was chauffeuring you that you felt that Haiti could break your heart. I wonder if you'd like to explain that. You know I think you meant as a pioneer. Haiti can-

[10:40] No, I felt it was a heart-breaking place because the people here are obviously very, very lovely people. They not only remind me of Africa, but they remind me of themselves so to speak. They're lovely people here in Haiti. They're anything but simple people. Anybody who is fool enough to come here and think that the Haitians are naïve and straightforward is crazy. The Haitians are neither naïve nor straightforward. They're extremely sly and extremely shrewd, but it doesn't mean that they are not very sweet people. They are a fine people. And they have, I'm sure, fine capacity to become Baháʼís, to receive the Cause of Bahá’u’lláh, to establish its institutions, to follow its institutions, you see. And when you see the poverty in the country and the serious condition of the country, I mean like the erosion because there's no forestations and things like that, you see. Your heart aches for the country. You can't help it. You see the great need of the people. Your heart aches for them. That's what I meant, that Haiti is a country that you can love so much and want to serve so much and feel that Haiti deserves to be served so much. This is what I have felt coming here. Haiti is a country that would attract me, frankly, as a pioneer. Many, many countries I go through and I wish them luck and I loved meeting them and I think they're lovely countries and the Cause will progress and so on but no desire to go and serve that country. But I can easily see why one would want to be a pioneer in this country.

[12:31] [Woman speaking] There was another subject, John, that she mentioned in the car today but I don't remember how you phrased it. You can phrase it better.

[12:40] [John speaking] One that I mentioned? No, I don't want to bring that up. Unless you're thinking, are you thinking of the word corruption?

[12:51] [Woman speaking] No you said something, I don't even know the word in English. You said it that I just know what I said. I can't even say the words.

[13:00] Well you better think about it while somebody else asks the question. When you two remember what it is, well then we'll have it.

[13:07] [Another woman speaking] There seems to be a big controversial question or confusion about mass teaching.

[13:15] Well the only confusion about mass teaching is that some people understand it and some people don't. [Laughter]. It's just as simple as that. That's what I wanted to talk about tonight! That was something I did want to say on my own without any questions and I was trying to think what it was. You see, I'm no mathematician, but the Baháʼí Faith has existed now for 136 years or something. How much does that leave to go to a thousand? Alright. It's 800 and something. Now, in 800, in a little over 800 years, maybe say let's say 900 or whatever it is years, the majority of the human race, not the totality of the human race, the majority of the human race according to the teachings, is supposed to come under the shadow of Bahá’u’lláh. Well, there are four billion people in the world today, more than that and God knows if we have a catastrophe, how many will be left? But supposing that the Biblical prophecy should come true and two-thirds of the world's population should be annihilated, there'd still be a good billion left, you see. How do you teach a billion people in 900 years, you see? You get busy and you bring in the masses. And this is what I keep telling the Baháʼís because although I'm mathematically weak, I'm not that stupid. And if you don't get at it, you will not get the people into the Faith because it will be a mathematical impossibility. You have to bring them in, and then you have to do something with them, you see.

[15:00] I was reading a book on this trip and to my great surprise, I'm very patchy education, very patchy about history, and King Olaf of Norway about the year 1,000 became converted to Christianity. Why it took a thousand years for somebody there to even hear about it, I don't know but that's what happened at the end. So he goes home and he baptizes all the Norwegians. The whole nation is baptized as Christians. Well, what do they know about Jesus Christ? Absolute zero! He decided that this was from God and they were gonna be Christians so he had them all baptized. And then the priests got busy and began to educate them in Christianity, you see. And I can remember Shoghi Effendi mentioning many times how Charlemagne had had his whole army baptized. He just took them down the river. He got converted, so he had the whole army converted by just the simple process of baptizing them in the river, you see. And yet we Baháʼís are caviling at any system by which we bring in the people by troops. What is mass conversion? Bringing them in by troops. Tell me what else it's going to be? You tell me how to get them. If you don't do what the Master said, bring them in by troops, when are they going to come under the shadow of Bahá’u’lláh? This is a religion that is for society. Par excellence. It he has teachings for the individual, soul salvation and all the rest of it, but this is a religion for the whole human race, for society on the planet to begin to create one society and eventually world order. How are you going to do it unless you have the masses? You can't do it because our religious teachings, exclusive of individual salvation sort of thing, to put into practice the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh requires hundreds and thousands of people and populations, and then you can make it work. Otherwise, you can't make it work at all because it is for society.

[17:15] I always tell the Baháʼís if I want to make bread, and I put a couple of spoonful's of flours and a pinch of salt and a spoonful of water and I go like that, I can't make bread. Bread, you have to have a big container and a lot of flour and water, and then you have to knead it. And you can't knead a thing that's that big. You have to have a big mass to work, you see. Well you've got to have to them in the Faith to create the Baháʼí society of the future. Otherwise, you can't work at it, you see. How are you going to get them in the Faith? You know, this is a very, very peculiar religion. Whichever way you at it, it's very peculiar. We are taught we should teach this Faith to everybody. Bahá’u’lláh says, "Teach." It's my privilege, it's even the privilege of that little boy. Even at this age or maybe a year from now, he can go and say, "Bahá, Bahá, Bahá." And somebody will go to the father mother and said, "What is this thing 'Bahá, Bahá, Bahá' this child is trying to tell me?" So you see he's teaching the Baháʼí Faith. [Laughter]. It's happened. The point is that if we don't get people to... we have to teach, even the children. Everybody's free to teach. You don't have to do anything in the Baháʼí Faith except behave yourself and obey some of the laws. But otherwise you're encouraged to teach. So having taught, you're encouraged to get them to accept Bahá’u’lláh and there's no prerequisites. Shoghi Effendi said they had to accept the Báb as the forerunner, Bahá’u’lláh as the, you know, Prophet, well never mind the words, I'm doing the talking. Bahá’u’lláh as the Prophet, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá as the Interpreter of the teachings, and the present day administrative order. This was what he said, these four conditions. Now that much, let alone the whole 12 so-called basic principles, I can explain to anybody in ten minutes. And I know I can because I've done it dozens and dozens of times. And then after that, if they had listened to me and I have been clear and they have been touched, there's no reason why they shouldn't accept it, you see.

[19:40] All right, then what happens? You've got to accept them. First, you have to tell them. Then you have to accept them. When you've accepted them, wherever there's nine, you have to immediately when the time comes form a Spiritual Assembly, which of course is ludicrous if you think about it. They don't know anything at all! You have to teach them. You have to accept them. They have to form a Spiritual Assembly when there's nine or over nine. And this is the teachings in our faith and the teachings that have come directly from the Guardian, from ‘Abdu’l-Bahá based on the instructions of Bahá’u’lláh, the spirit of Bahá’u’lláh interpreted by the Master, and then the details worked out by Shoghi Effendi, and the House of Justice enforcing it all today and telling us of all of these plans. What are you going to do? What are you waiting for? It's very peculiar but then if you're a Baháʼí you have to accept that it is peculiar and that it will work. And that if we have the faith to do what we are told and stick with it, so to speak, why that it will work out alright. You see, all of you are too young in the Faith. There's only two people in this room that have been born Baháʼís. Well, he's born but he's young in years. Violette's young, still she's 18 years younger than I. I've been over 70 years in the Baháʼí Faith. I've seen when there were no Baháʼís in the dominion of Canada, when maybe I was the only Baháʼí child in the dominion of Canada, when maybe there were 25 or 30 Baháʼí children in North America, not one in the whole of the Americas and no Baháʼís in Africa except in the Sudan and Egypt, you see, and no Baháʼís in the east except in India, Iraq, and Persia and so on, and Palestine, as I say. So that you see the difference between the Baháʼí world in my childhood, in her childhood 18 years ago, in his childhood as they're born Baháʼí what 10-15 years ago and all of you, even you who've been Baháʼís 10-15 years, you have seen the difference in the spread of the Faith, the difference in the development of the Faith. Well, how did it get that way? It got that way because we are doing what we've been asked to do. We have pioneered. We have opened new countries. We have spread to different cities. We have brought in the people even though we didn't quite know what we were doing. We have formed the Spiritual Assemblies and so on and so on. We've raised the National Assemblies on a little shaky foundation like this. It's working because it's from God, you see. This is where we have to have Faith.

[22:30] Remember the Master, one of His last words to Americas, I think when He was sailing He said, "As ye have faith, so shall your powers and blessings be. This is the balance. This is the balance. This is the balance." It says in the Bible as ye have faith, very much the same thing. You should say to this, you know, mustard seed be a mountain or whatever it is, the mountain get up and move from here to there and grain of mustard seed become something else. It's always the same thing really. We have to do our part, confident that God knows His business and will do His part. We don't have to argue with Him about it. But the follow-up, I think the teaching is going well all over the world but the tragedy is the follow-up. This is the great tragedy. We are teaching but people ask me what is deepening. Well, I know what is deepening except for people like us in this room or in the cities or the educated and literate if you like. For us it should be to read the teachings more so we understand them better. And if we have the opportunity to go to summer schools or seminars so that we hear courses on the Baháʼí Faith well-presented that we learn more and they stimulate us in our understanding, that to me is deepening. Of course, the greatest deepening in the world was to teach because then somehow or other as you teach, you're taught. I've seen that in my own life so very vividly. But teaching, aside from what I'm talking about, is just two words: go back. We go, we teach the people, we enroll them and we never go back. The deepening is just to go back. Go back and say, "Hello again." Go back and show them a little more love. Go back and answer a few more questions. Go back and find out if they're still there. Go back. See, that's the deepening.

[24:48]I remember once in India, the then secretary of the National Assembly was one of the best mass teachers and every now and then, he was quite temperamental, he'd get very upset. And he'd go out and he'd bring in 2,000 Baháʼís on one trip. And then he'd suddenly come to me and he'd say, "Khánum, what kind of Baháʼís are these? What kind of a Baháʼí is this? What kind of people are these? Is this the way we should be doing? What can they know about the Baháʼí Faith?" Well I said, "After all you went out on the teaching trip and brought them in, aren't you ashamed to talk this way?" Well he said, "I don't know. I don't know." And he'd get all excited. So I said, "Well, did you go back?" He said, one place I went and I taught and I think it was three months he never got back there. So I said, "Well, did you eventually get back?" He said yes. I said, "Could you find those villagers?" He said yes. I said, "What did they say to you?" He said, "They scolded me. They said, 'Is this the way you treat us? You came and you told us about this wonderful thing and we accept it and you never came back to tell us anymore? And you left us like this with so little knowledge, never even bothering to come back and give us more knowledge on the subject?'" But I said, "Don't you see this shows that they had become Baháʼís? Otherwise why would they scold you for not coming back? If it hadn't touched them, if it meant nothing to them, why would they be upset that you hadn't returned, you see?"

[26:28] [Man speaking] Here in Haiti we've had some areas where a team went and then they did not see a Baháʼí for deepening for example for another year. I was thinking about the area where I am. So I go to a community. They say, "Oh, I'm so happy to see you. Where have you been?" So I go and I visit them for a couple of times. And then I come back again. And they do the same [?]. They say, "Well, no one has come back to deepen us." But when I go there, anything about the Faith doesn't seem to interest them. So the House of Justice spoke about teaching is lighting a fire so that the fire could burn itself. And it seems to me that in some of these cases, when you go back after such a long period of time that the fire has gone out and the effort you put in seems to be blowing on kindling which no longer has any fire.

[27:30] Well I don't know what more you could do because if you don't go out and teach, you're not even beginning to fulfill the teachings and the cries of the House of Justice rallying us to teaching. And if you can't get back for a year, what are you going to do? I think that as I say, to me the great tragedy in the Baháʼí world today is that we don't get back to these places, you see. Not only we're not doing enough teaching, but we're having no follow-up. This is what is called consolidation or deepening or follow-up. It's all the same thing. Meaning is the same. But I really don't know what else we can do except that we should try harder. And I think that one of the great tragedies, I don't know about Haiti because I mean how would I? I've only seen one place so far and that's Port-au-Prince but most countries the great tragedy is that the only place the pioneers can or sometimes will settle to earn their living is in the capital. And because of that, you see, all of the other places are neglected. They have to have some kind of profession. They can't always be paid teachers on the fund. And they are always settled all more or less in one place and the mere act of having a job cuts down your teaching time by a great deal, you see. And they're always congregated in exactly the same place.

[29:12] [Woman speaking] Rúhíyyih Khánum, before we went to Jacmel, we believed strongly that the only way we can make a living was to stay here in Port-au-Prince and we have gone, we gambled by going there. When we realized that just by going there we first came off the funds. Second, we went on pilgrimage. And thirdly, we became completely independent and living better than before. That in the country sides we think of the organizations. We think of the schools. We think of the possibilities that the city offers. What's a small town going to offer? The one product that the most sold, and the number one bestseller in Haiti is the English language, anywhere you go. And even if you go in the countryside where salary would be half of what you'd be paid here in Port-au-Prince, well you'll also pay half the rent and half the food, so it balances off. Every little town in Haiti would offer English job to anybody who would like to teach.

[30:10] That's true. All the pioneers in Japan, and I mean, really, I can't think of any exceptions except very rare people who may have some particular connection, were all supported through teaching English in one end of the country to the other. It's the only visa the Japanese government will give. Such a demand for learning English. And they're spread all over Japan, teaching English. But then of course Japanese cities are very large, but I think he's right. I think that there's many ways that people would be willing to try it. I'm a very honest person. I'm frank. I don't, you know, pull my punches or wrap things up in sweet remarks to make you feel good, but I don't think this would apply to this group of people in this room from what I've seen of all of you. But it would apply to a great many countries that Violette and I have been to and that is it's disastrous to get the pioneers first settled in the capital, because then they don't want to leave it. They get there and they get housing and they get the children in a certain school and they get settled down and the woman knows where the supermarket is and where this is and that is and the other thing. And then, after setting down their first root in a new country in the capital, to get them to go to one of the provincial towns is almost impossible. But I don't think that that would apply to Haiti. But it certainly applies in Africa and many of the countries that we've been to. We came through one country in Central America and the National Assembly said that we bring the pioneers here to the capital first and after they've been here about a year or so they get used to the country and the language, then we encourage them to pioneer. I said, "Don't you do it. Don't. You'll never get them out of the capital. You get them to go the day they arrive out into the provincial town, or you'll never uproot them from the capital and get them out." And it's been true all over Africa.

[32:20] [Man speaking] When I was in Zaire Amatu’l-Bahá, it was said that every time a new Baháʼí arrived and settled in the capital, less total Baháʼí work got done in the country. And almost everyone suddenly, it was distressing to see.

[32:36] No it's universal, but I truthfully, I don't think you're that kind of people here. From what I've seen of all of you, I don't think you're that kind of people but it's certainly is true of great many countries.

[32:50] [Woman speaking] When we went to teach in the North, you know, there was a radio station that have offered to give some deepening on the radio for all the Baháʼí to the North, you know, and was... I don't know why it did not pass. I mean the National Spiritual Assembly wanted to use the radio and finally, nothing happened. Is it something that we should really, when we have an opportunity to press on radio, is it something that we should, you know, plan to get, you know?.

[33:22] Well I think this is something one has to take up with the National Assembly. I don't know why it didn't happen and neither do you. But then the National Assembly should have this called to their attention and think about whether they can do it again, why they didn't do it. And maybe in some particular reason for not doing it. But there's one thing that I do want to say, because presumably all of the pioneers are teachers, I mean Baháʼí teachers. I think that wherever you teach, you have got to be very, very careful that there is never a repetition of what happened last time where they got active communists enrolled in the Faith who used us as a front, because this country can't stand that twice. And it had it once, and that was enough. So when you enroll people, when you teach people, you want to study the person and use your head. Don't get all emotionally lit up like a Christmas tree. You know, "AH! It's marvelous! I found someone to teach, and I can bring them in. And isn't that beautiful and such a lovely soul? And 'Yá Bahá'u'l-Abhá'" and so on. That's fine, but don't get carried away. Use your heads and use your discrimination and be quite sure that a certain category of people, and I don't think it would be true of the peasants out in the villages. I doubt it. Wouldn't you think so? That it wouldn't be true of the peasants?

[34:54] [Woman speaking] The peasants? No.

[34:56] I'm talking to him, the pioneer from the the North.

[34:59] [Woman speaking] Excuse me.

[34:59] I wouldn't think you'd have much trouble in the villages with the peasants on that subject.

[35:05] [Man speaking] I wouldn't think so.

[35:05] But I do think that people have to be vigilant because this Faith here can't stand that a second time. One really has to be careful.

[35:19] [Man speaking] When one is trying to deepen people who are illiterate, are there any suggestions that you could make to us? You know is singing.. and things like that?

[35:32] Look, everybody was illiterate. I don't know where you came from, but I know that my ancestors that came over from Scotland five generations ago I think they were literate. But I don't know very much further back whether they were all literate or not. It's not so long that we in the West have been literate, the populace, you see. So what are we talking about literacy for? There've been gigantic cultures in the world that never had writing like the Incan Empire. They never had writing and they had an empire that was the rival of Rome and almost as big. Had better roads if anything and so on, you see. So I'm not so strong on literacy. My experience with illiterates, and it's pretty exhaustive at this point, is that they usually have much more retentive memories, much higher powers of concentration, and much more logical, clear minds than literates, especially highly educated literates in our society. Well I'm sorry. I've seen it. I believe it.

[36:41] [Man speaking] So in other words what you say stays in the minds of people?

[36:45] Yes, why is this so complicated? If all right, do you suppose I know all about the Baháʼí teachings? There isn't one person on this planet, including every single member of the Universal House of Justice that knows all about the Baháʼí teachings. The only man that did die, that was Shoghi Effendi. None of us know all the Baháʼí teachings. You may know things I don't know. I haven't run across them or I've forgotten them. And I may know things you don't. Does it mean that I'm not a good Baháʼí or you're not a good Baháʼí? Of course not, you see. But enough to go on with is to accept Bahá’u’lláh as the Manifestation of God, accept the fundamental things that are required of us as Baháʼís and go on with that. Then you add to that, you see. If people come to summer schools, if they come to institutes, the literate and the illiterate, all they have to do is to open their ears and listen. And usually you will be astonished at the degree of logical intelligence of the illiterates. In African villages I have had Africans after a three-hour meeting, very courteously waiting until the end of my talk all translated from one language to another. And then the question period and then they would ask me a question that went back to something that I had said at the beginning of a three-hour meeting. I've seen African villagers sit up all night long asking other Africans or the pioneers about the Baháʼí Faith. They weren't bobbing to go to bed. They weren't gonna waste their time. They can sleep tomorrow night. Attending a meeting that began at eight o'clock, by 10 or 11 we were dead. We went to bed, but not they. They sat up right straight through the next morning, asking questions of the Baháʼí teachers that were there so they could learn more. I mean, I don't know. What's all this literacy business? All right, supposing you know more about Aristotle and compound interest and algebra. So what? That's not gonna get you anywhere. You won't get to the Abhá kingdom with that, it may get you a better job.

[39:00] [Man speaking] Well I think you have to be... If you're talking to people who don't read you have to be very careful what you say because if you say the wrong thing or you give information that's not quite accurate and they remember it then you're in trouble.

[39:13] Yes, but then, on the other hand, what are you gonna do? You can't wait til he becomes literate or til I have some sense about how I should talk. Then we'll be waiting til the Manifestation of God that comes after Bahá’u’lláh. [Laughter]. You see, we haven't got that much time. How are you going to do it?

[39:30] [Man speaking] Well I agree with you. I think we got to go ahead and do it. I'm asking the question in case you have more experience in these things than I do which I'm sure you do.

[39:41] Well I may have more than you, but I'll tell you everything I've learned about mass teaching I've learned since Shoghi Effendi passed away and I began these travels about 15 years ago. I learned it very late in life. I learned all that I know about mass teaching after I was 55. And I learned most of it from her husband and partially from Violette who'd also learned most of it from her own husband and from Shirin Boman in India. That's all I know about mass teaching. And still I have difficulty because I'm too intellectual in my approach. I talk, if I'm not extremely careful, above the heads of the villagers that I'm talking to, to pull myself down, to be more simple and understandable.

[40:25] [Woman speaking] Yes, I think that's what the man was saying.

[40:27] [Another woman speaking] Rúhíyyih Khánum, there is a law of Bahá’u’lláh, a principle of Bahá’u’lláh that say that everybody has to go out and teach and those who cannot do it, let them deputize somebody to go in their stead. Now in Haiti we find it difficult because financial assistance becomes misunderstood. Yet we do sometimes would like somebody else to go in our steads in teachings. Have you had any problems that in Africa or...?

[40:55] Well generally speaking, I think people give to the funds, the Baháʼís give to the funds and the funds take care of international fund. Look at all the money that the House of Justice spends to all the national bodies of the world in different projects. I mean the whole Baháʼí Faith would come to a complete standstill if it weren't for the resources of the Faith that come via the House of Justice. Then the National Assemblies do a tremendous lot too, you see. But I think that individuals can deputize if they want to. There's nothing to prevent their doing it. I think that those things are better if they're done on a consultative basis but if you want to help someone, you know Martha Root was deputized for years by another Baháʼí. Very quietly. She had no money.

[41:48] [Man speaking] Well one of the problems here in Haiti is that the country is so, so poor. And there have been problems in the past giving people money to do things and they never arrive at the place or they use the money for something else.

[42:12] Well let me tell you some nice Baháʼí anecdotes that will encourage you. When we went to Sikkim years and years ago, way up on top of the mountain, the whole of Sikkim is just like that, literally. I'm not gonna lie, oh no. Not on your tintype I mean, really. Like that. I mean it isn't like that. Anyway, point is that on the top of a mountain was a village of Baháʼís and they wanted very much to have a Baháʼí school. And Sikkim was under the National Assembly of India.... [Brief interruption]. Anyway they wanted the school and the National Assembly sent them money for a school and the treasurer swallowed all money. So then they were very upset. They never got the money back and they wanted their school. So again they started begging for a school. And the National Assembly of India is a very wise and loving motherly Assembly so they again sent them the money for the school. That time, the whole Assembly divided the money between all nine of them and swallowed it. So then still they wanted their Baháʼí school up there. And eventually the National Spiritual Assembly after a lot of scolding and admonitions and spankings and what-not, a third time they sent them the money. In the end, they got the school. You see, I consider this wisdom. I don't approve of the treasurer running off with all the money for the school. I don't approve at all of the nine members of the Assembly swallowing all the money too but it was so nice. There it was, you see, and they were all poor and it was a lovely sum of money. So they just divided it nine ways, and that was fine. They still didn't have their school, but eventually they got it, you see. And these are the things that we have to realize. This is the sort of thing that happens with people. It doesn't always happen but it can happen.

[44:28] Another place in India, India's a great place for things like this happening. They sent a teacher from Calcutta to the state of Orissa to teach the tribes. And he agreed. He was a man. He was quite a respectable man, had a good employment in the city. And he said, "All right, I'll go on my vacation to that tribe and teach." You see? So they gave him the money. He went home and had a very good time with his family and a lovely holiday and never went near the tribes. So the tribes didn't get taught. And he swallowed all the money and they went to him and they talked to him. And they said, "You know, that was really an awful thing you did. Now, won't you go and teach the tribes?" So they gave him the money next year. And next year his vacation he did go teach the tribes. You see, we have to be patient with the limitations of human nature. And these are such a, what shall I say, they're such conspicuous sins. But I'm afraid in our culture, we have much bigger and handsomer sins only they're not conspicuous.

[45:35] In other words, what I'm trying to say is that because you have difficulties and problems of that kind, you can't give up. You have to perhaps choose a more reliable person to send out on a teaching trip, you have to hope that they will be honest. In Africa, there was only one country in the whole continent that we met that we ever heard this story. That nationalist[?] is Malawi. That National Assembly asked the farmers if they would teach during the quiet agricultural period, which was ideal because they weren't busy with their crops or harvest or anything so they had a lull in their activities. And they asked them if they would go and be traveling teachers in the country and they accepted and they'd go for two or three months. And the National Assembly would calculate the bus fares and how much they needed and they'd give them the money. And they kept account and they would bring back the change. [Recording cuts out].

[46:56] ... this self-righteousness that we're all inclined to is really awful characteristic. I am holier than thou sort of thing, look down my nose at you.

[47:08] [Greg speaking] What advice would you have on the balance between trying to teach the local believers to carry on the affairs of the Faith themselves versus the truthfully much easier alternative of just doing it. You know the pioneers often end up doing everything because it's so much easier than... [Ruhiyyih Khanum] Than trying to get someone else to. [Greg speaking] ... working with individuals and uh. But obviously the purpose of the pioneers is to develop a community in that place and carry on the affairs of the Faith.

{{t|47:41} I think we have to do both, Greg. I mean, it's no use. You can't say, "Do it this way. Do it that way." You just have to play so many things by ear as a Baháʼí and as a pioneer teacher. If you can get them to go out we want them to become the teachers because we may all have to go home but they can stay, it's their country you see. We want them to be the administrators, we want them to rise to a point where they will eventually be the board members and the assistants and all this sort of thing. But in the meantime, we can't just not have the Cause go forward. That's why the pioneers are here. So you just have to do both. But what Ali did in Africa was very wonderful. And I don't know, maybe some of the other teachers did it, too, pioneers. He would take promising young Baháʼís, Africans actually, with him on the teaching trip, partly to translate and also to learn. And then they'd listen to Ali teaching in village after village. They'd learn how from him to teach and they'd get enthusiastic and they'd learn the ropes. And they'd learn the route and everything else, and eventually why they could go out by themselves and do some of that.

{{t|49:07} Violette if you have anything to add go ahead and add it. You're the one that was a pioneer for 12 years. I'm a mini-pioneer. I was a pioneer for three months in Bermuda. The most precious time of my life was purely accidental. I assure you I didn't go there as a mini-pioneer, but I'd like to think I was a mini-pioneer.

[49:32] [Violette speaking] First of all, I think you know that pioneers come with a set of ideas and message we have been used to, where ever we come from. And we [?] the place we go and just water it down, to make it simple. But it's essentially our message, our reasoning. What has convinced us, where ever we came from, we think should convince the people we are teaching and very rarely we listen to the local people where ever we are, to their reasoning, their examples, their way of teaching. And even if we do, sometimes it sounds so simple that you don't think it's good enough to repeat it or learn and imitate it. But if we do listen, at least this is the way we found in Africa, they are fabulous teachers. It may sound very simple and childish the way they say it, with one story or often you know folklores of the past that they come up, stories that they've heard, which gives one of the most profound teachings of Bahá’u’lláh in a simple story of their own people. And then this happened and we were traveling in Africa and I had seen that in Uganda repeatedly. I have heard this from Ali so often, that he would try to make a point and they wouldn't understand and he couldn't get home. Then suddenly one villager would come out and ask permission to say. Then he would go on saying a story that sometimes at the beginning of it he was wondering where he's going, you see. It didn't at all related to what he was talking about. At at the end, it would convince everybody. Whatever he said was the answer. So my suggestion is that if you haven't done it yet, try to listen sometimes to the Haitians and see how they teach because we often as pioneers we think we have come to teach them. You know, be prepared to learn from them.

[52:03] I'd like to ask a few questions. First of all, I'd like to ask have you got any Haitian teachers? [Audience response] Yes, yes.

[52:15] Where? Everywhere or just somewhere? [Audience members answering] Usually around the capital here. In Jacmel.

[52:23] They go out and teach? [names of Haitian teachers are mentioned].

[52:39] Are they sent on regular trips to the villages or not?

[52:39] [Man speaking] Well, George [?] works with the national center, he's the secretary. And [?] works for the National Center too so they're on a limited salary. They're paid by the NSA. So what they can afford, when they can afford they go out and teach usually in their home areas. In the [?].

[53:07] Well that's only two people on the whole island. And no others?

[53:12] [Woman speaking] In Jacmel there's a different system.

[53:14] You have teachers, you have natives that are going out teaching in the villages?

[53:17] [Woman speaking] Yes, regularly. Every two weeks. Each one have adopted a town that is his own.

[53:23] Well, that's one area. But then what about in the north where you were? You know, I wanted to come and see you but I didn't get there.

[53:30] [Man speaking] Is it too late? [laughter].

[53:34] It's not... It's too late for this trip, but I don't know whether I'll ever be able to come back. But I can tell you right now that I'd like to come back to Haiti for four or five weeks visiting the small towns and the villages. But then I'd have to have some way that I could do it safely for my health. And I don't know whether there're hotels in places that you could go. I don't know Haiti at all, if there are places in the sort of pockets or centers where there's a decent hotel, and then from there you could go out to the villages. Would that be possible?

[54:14] [Audience responding/Man speaking] Yes. It's possible. But to answer your question, I don't know of any teachers in the North except... I don't, not any functioning teachers right now. There's the possibility that someone will arise, a Haitian will arise. He is deepening himself but most of the Baháʼís in the North have shown, that I have met, in the Cape Haitian area out there, with several maybe one or two exceptions that are interested in deepening. If you go and talk about the Faith, that's fine. They enjoy that. But as far as getting up and going and telling someone about the Faith, I don't know of any.

[54:57] Can anybody answer me this? Why? Is it because of a natural inertia in the population? Is it because it's always priests that are doing all this kind of work and the ordinary citizen had never thought of doing it? What is the reason for it?

[55:18] [Man asking] Well I have asked that question-

[54:20 ] Because the reason is in the Haitian, nothing to do with the Baháʼí Faith. The reason is in the people. Now, what's the reason?

[55:27] [Man speaking] Well, when I came here, someone told me that the Haitians liked new things. They liked to accept new things. And for a few weeks they're very enthusiastic about it. And after that, well, they forget. And my experience in the North has been - well, I come from a very conservative Baháʼí background in the States. So when I teach, I try to explain everything and just not have someone coming to Faith because the [?] are so nice and great. They know about Bahá’u’lláh and everything, basically. So they accept the Baháʼí Faith and you try as much as possible to deepen them. And these are people who have the capacity to take a book and read it and tell someone else about the Faith.

[56:23] Well that's not mass conversion. That's silly teaching.

[56:26] [Man speaking] Well yeah. Yeah, it is.

[56:30] I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it. Thank God you're doing it. But my point is, this isn't mass conversion.

[56:35] [Man speaking] No, it isn't mass conversion. But by the same token, I am saying that there are people who could take the Baháʼí Faith to the Haitian people, but they don't. And I don't know why. I have asked this question of board members and other pioneers. Why? Because the Faith has been here, maybe over forty years.

[57:00] Yes, unbelievable.

[57:01] [Man speaking] And the Haitians themselves teaching, we don't see this. Except for a few exceptions. I don't know why.

[57:11] [Woman speaking (Violette?)] I think it might stem from the history. I think there's a great lack of self-confidence in people. And I think it stems from slavery days, way in the past and also the educational process, too. And also the status, class. If you're poor, you're you know, uneducated. You're down, you see. It's a self-image. I think it's the self-image in the people.

[57:41] I don't think it comes from slavery and I'll tell you why. Because the American black are certainly not lacking in initiative and self-assertiveness and everybody that knows anything about the United States knows that. And they're much closer to slavery than these people, because these people had a revolt and broke away from slavery. So it's not slavery. Forget that, if you don't mind my saying so. That's not the psychological reason. But, I'm wondering how - I'd like very much to get an answer about what the hold of voodoo has on the people still in Haiti, because I remember reading about Haiti in the past and about voodoo in Haiti, which was extraordinarily common. And very, very deeply ingrained in the people. And it's sort of become mixed now with Christianity, mainly perhaps with the Catholic Church. I don't know about other sects. And I'd like to know what the relationship of voodoo is to the people, if any of you know that answer. Yes? You let him tell me, he's been here longest.

[58:50] [Man speaking] That doesn't mean I know everything - but being married to a Haitian has given me some very interesting insights. And one of the insights is that even the most educated people, the most so-called sophisticated people, the ones who are supposedly the most, I don't know really, whoop-dee-do, the ones who really, you would think would not be in this position are just as scared of voodoo, and believe in it just as much as the poorest villager does, although they hide it better.

[59:28] That was my understanding.

[59:29] [Man speaking] It has a terrible hold on the people. And it's a hold that's in there, since... The Haitian people really have never left slavery. If it wasn't for foreigners enslaving them, they threw off one slavery and got into another one.

[59:43] Their own people are the dictators.

[59:45] [Man speaking] Their own people, yes. And the history of Haiti has been one of oppressor and oppressed. Even religion has been an instrument of this oppression. And voodoo at times has been sort of an escape from the oppression that religion brought, but even that was a type of oppression too. But the hold of voodoo is extremely strong and [name] related something to me the other day, which I've heard before from someone. Much the same kind of thing that the many Haitians... I saw this in Africa, too. Many Haitians keep their foot in each of the camps in case one of them might be right, whichever one it is they'll be there. So you'll see many Haitians educated and uneducated, so-called upper class and so-called lower class, it just cuts society right down the middle. Going to church on Sunday and going to the voodoo priest whenever they're really in [overlapping speech] to make sure, if you're sending their servant or just somehow or other, keeping that contact and staying in good with everybody so that whichever one is right, they'll be there.

[1:00:58] [Man speaking] Now, I had a talk with the dentist, who's a very interesting fellow. He's a very mystical type and [?] a college, you know, if anyone knows Dr. [?]. Yeah, he's a very interesting fellow. And he told me something at my last appointment, which has had an effect on me and cuts right to what we're talking about. He said that really, if you look at history, most countries, most peoples have had to go through a barbaric, savage period where somebody oppressed somebody else and punished somebody else and hurt somebody else and had to step down on somebody else to prove his own power. And most nations pulled out of it. And the reason many nations pulled out of it, and all the nations kind of go through this bad period before they find themselves, so to speak. And nations of Europe, nations of Asia had some kind of background - this is his opinion and I don't know, it makes sense to me. People have had a background of justice, peace that somehow the best state of all things, despite their present barbarity or savagery or violence, they felt somehow that they had to reach toward something more stable, some ideal of love, some ideal of a just society. That there was an ideal, like Europe had Christianity behind it at least while they were all fighting each other at various times, there was still the ideal of Christianity there in Christ's teaching somewhere at the base of it.

[1:02:45] [Man speaking] But the Haitians never had this, he said. Many Haitians - he said many slaves who came to Haiti came from Dahomey, Haute-Volta, that area of the world. And in his study, anthropological study, he found that there is a prayer in one of the Dahomeyan tribes, where it is mentioned quite specifically the people ask their gods for forgiveness for sending their brothers into slavery in Haiti. And the word Haiti is mentioned in this prayer. What, you know, the African slave game, you know, you sell your brother into slavery-

[1:03:20] And they played it. Everybody knows that.

[1:03:23] [Man speaking] Mm-hmm. So coming here and to become slaves of a society which itself was going through a revolution and a lot of turmoil and a lot of oppression into a form of slavery which several historians - I'm reading one now - says was the worst in the Americas. Much more oppressive than anything North America ever had, and anything South America had. The most oppressive type of slavery was here in the French colony of Saint-Domingue. So to make a long story short, the Haitian people have never had an ideal of somewhere finding peace and justice. It's been a cynical history. It's been an oppressive history, and many people grew up with the idea that it's never gonna change. So there's a sense of resignation, that it's God's will that it be this way. If person A is in the position to oppress someone, he will. Because that's the only relationship that people are capable of understanding. Even religion has played its part in this, wittingly or unwittingly. So I found with many Haitians, they expect someone else to do things, to start things, because one, they're used to a priest, used to a leader, used to someone to be on top and they're on the bottom. And two, in recent history if you stick your neck out, you might get it chopped off. Yes well, recent history kind of put it into, made it reach a point.

[1:04:59] In other words, very, very recent.

[1:05:02] [Man speaking] Yeah in other words. This history of this country has not been one, it has not been a very happy one. It's been one where initiative has been stifled. That voodoo has a hold.

[1:05:11] That I can see. But I've been, ever since I came here, I've been trying in my own mind to think what approach the Baháʼís could have that could be of any use in this situation, you see. That's why I asked you. It's because I still haven't come up with any answer whatsoever. Dahomey, we found more magic, more juju in Dahomey than any other place in the whole of Africa. And it's very, very strong, even today. So it's not extraordinary that it shouldn't still be very strong right here, you see. In Haiti many of the people were brought from Dahomey from that part of the world because they just brought it over with them. But what to do to change this mentality, I don't know. I think that the Baháʼís have to think psychologically how to present it. There were certain things that I could present to the villagers, that I knew I was on the right track in Africa. One of them was to help them to overcome their fears, you see. They are afraid because of superstitions. But there are many things which people negate in their understanding and it's stupid. For instance, they say that oh ghosts all nonsense. There's no such thing as being possessed. And there's no such thing as a house being haunted, you see. There's no such thing as this. They just negate the whole thing. They'd say it doesn't exist, but that's no answer at all because it does exist. And I believe that it could exist, you see, from my own background if you like. And because of this I have this attitude of talking to the Africans about death and about being haunted and about ghosts and so on.

[1:07:20] Now I think you could teach them the way I used to teach in Africa, which I think was efficacious. I don't know. I presume Violette agrees with me, but I don't think it meets the answer to voodooism, which is something that doesn't exist anywhere in the world to the degree to which it exists here in Haiti, you see. In any way it's Haiti that we're concerned with so I really don't know how one would tackle it. That's what really puzzles me and interests me, how to tackle this question of teaching them in such a way. Young people you should be able to teach through science. You should be able to appeal to their scientific, logical minds, which, of course, is a wonderful antidote to the slavery of fear that they have. So that shouldn't be so hard with the youth. But the people that you want to teach the Cause to in the villages are not so much the youth but you want to teach the middle-aged people, the fathers of families, the older people. I don't know about Haiti, but I know in Africa I used to tell the pioneers. I said, "When you go into a village, go to the grandmother, go to the old women, the oldest person in the village, the old woman, the old man and pay your respects to them and be polite to them and be courteous to them and be loving to them and try and get their sympathy for the Faith. Because if they are against it, they won't allow it to grow up in that village. And even if they don't become Baháʼís, if they are favorable, they will allow it to develop in their village. But otherwise they won't. No doubt in my mind on that subject.

[1:09:12] [Woman speaking] Rúhíyyih Khánum, there is one thing that we have found working in Jacmel, not that it might work in the whole country or it's a solution. The way we're teaching in Jacmel, those who come into the Faith if they stick to it, that was well and it will continue. And if they didn't stick to it, we did not pester them and say, "How come you're not coming and we don't see you anymore." And give them the guilt thing. But we were there all the time, twice a week we had deepenings in our home. And we taught them the justice of don't let injustice be done to you, in the way we were teaching the Faith. And every week we were out teaching and most of the Baháʼís you will see when you come to Jacmel live around our house. And most of the strong ones are youth. So from seeing us going out and they would say, "Where are you going?" and all that, they came with us. And eventually by coming with us and accompanying us on those long trips, they learned how to teach. And one day, because I was really sick, I couldn't do it. We said, "Well, we're gonna send that person. He's gonna replace us." And we laid on his shoulder. It was the first time he ever taught. And he has gone and enrolled, what is this, like 12 people way. We doubted. I mean how in the world he could have taught them and what kind of Baháʼís they were? But we knew we would come back with them the week after and it didn't matter. Even when we taught, we don't know what we taught. Anyway, he did not teach exactly like we taught. But many times we come back in the village and we say hello and we reach the Baháʼís we taught and they don't even who Bahá’u’lláh is so what's the difference? In a way what's the difference? And we felt that because we were out there teaching every week and when we come back, we gather everybody and just sheer over the enthusiasm of not doing what we have done. Eventually they become itchy and wanted to be part of it, too. And we have a very good teaching community in Jacmel. Not very big, we have maybe six or seven teachers. That's all I can say. But four local assemblies were formed this year in Jacmel area by not having neither Paul or myself in the teams. And none of the Baháʼís were more than three-months-old Baháʼís. So we're very happy.

[1:11:38] [Another woman speaking] I have two things to say. One was the teaching, the same things happened in the [?] Area. There's two young people there who somehow they got declaration cards. And you know what to do with the declaration cards, you know? You go out and you get them signed, you know. That's not, I mean. Well that excited them. That was very - it was concrete and positive. You don't just kind of tell your friends, but then if they believe I mean, this is how how they see it. And I think that's, you know. I worry, too, about what kind of Bahá’ís those people are [laughter], but I go with him... And unfortunately I can hardly understand what he says because he mumbles so very much in Creole. But anyway I think that something we might think about, a gift from the, you know... I gave him 30 declaration cards and he filled out every one of them [laughter]. Another thing about voodoo is, and this I was more concerned, you know. I was saying this the other day when you were there at the school there was a man who is on the list as Baháʼí and he's a voodoo priest. And this man makes me nervous. And you're right, that's not a lot of humbug.

[1:13:05] Well nobody ever said it was.

[1:13:07] [Woman continues ] Right, really. And I worry. I feel very, very worried about this man being inside the Faith. I see him then he's real, real interested in power. And so he comes whenever anything's important. If there's kind of a simple 19-day feast, he wouldn't come. Or if there are white people there he might come, but anyway that kind of a thing. It's real, real obvious. But like he was talking to this one of the officials, one of the notables who came.

[1:13:41] He's not the one that asked him to sign the declaration card, I hope.

[1:13:46] [Audience] He is.

[1:13:37] Well that is ridiculous, absolutely ludicrous.

[1:13:50] [Woman continues] That's awful. You know, I was trying to tell someone to kind of scoop him up and get him into a conversation, get him off in a car.

[1:13:58] Who enrolled him in the first place?

[1:14:01] [woman speaking] That was done long before we came. He's an old old, Baháʼí from [?].

[1:14:11] Well and why don't you try and deepen him more? That's very simple. If he's an old, old Baháʼí you can't just kick him out because you don't like his face and you think he only comes when there's a meeting that has some kind of kudos attached to it.

[1:14:23] [Woman continues] Well, he told me. He said, "What's the point of this noonday prayer, you say?" Oh, God, you know I know that you -

[1:14:30] Well tell him you say the long one washing his face three times a day if nothing else. [Laughter].

[1:14:38] [Woman continues] So you don't feel that we should try and take any sort of action?

[1:14:42] Well what kind of action would you take? The man is a Baháʼí. He hasn't denied Bahá’u’lláh. He was enrolled long before you got there. What are you gonna do to him?

[1:14:52] [Woman continues] That's the question.

[1:14:54] [Audience member] We have an anti-witch doctor in Kenya.

[1:14:56] Oh, he's an anti-witch doctor.

[1:14:58] [Audience member] Recognized super-witch doctor. Why not?

[1:15:03] [Man speaking] I'd like to comment about the difference between voodoo and black magic. Voodoo and black magic are two completely different things. Voodoo is a religion. And religions are for the common good. Now some people who do voodoo might dabble in black magic and they almost all dabble in white magic because they have to undo the spells of a black magician. But you know, but that's something different. That's just for the health of their flock. And I think that, you know, just because we hear someone say "voodoo", you know we shouldn't get all upset. And I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. You know, we just have to kind of be balanced about all this and see whether people are doing bad or doing good.

[1:15:52] I don't think... I think, excuse me, I think you're missing the point. Nobody's interested whether it's bad or good or anything else. It is, as you say, it's a religion. Now, we don't want the people to remain half Catholic, half voodoo or one-third then Catholic one-third voodoo and then become one-third Baháʼí, you see. We want the people to become Baháʼís. And they are at present half voodoo and half Catholic or whatever else you want to call it, you see. So I'm interested in how to teach those people, I mean maybe in the long run, so that they will become really deep Baháʼís, you see. This is what my point was. It's perfectly clear the situation, but the point is how to win them into being converted Baháʼís, you see. I think this is a very interesting question. I think it's a question that ultimately is going to face the spread of the faith here in Haiti. Doesn't necessarily have to face it tomorrow morning or anything, but eventually this is the thing.

[1:16:54] [Violette speaking] Khanum do you think we can replace things that are very important objects, tangible things in voodoo religion? Is there something in the Faith than can replace it?

[1:17:08] Nothing. I'm very sorry. There's not a damn thing that can replace candles and bubbles with spirits in it and goats and all these things. There's nothing in the Faith.

[1:17:20] [Violette speaking] There is the greatest Name. There is the picture of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá.

[1:17:23] In that sense, yes.

[1:17:26] [Violette speaking] There is the repetition of certain prayers that if you say repeatedly over and over again. These are like - it resembles in many ways this incantation. Many of these - what do you think 100 years ago the people of Persia were? What they called [?] which is equivalent of black magic was rampant in that country. A lot in Tablets of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, there is so much against this. And therefore what happened to the Baháʼís that they were able to replace it. I think they were able to replace it with many of these prayers for special occasions. That repetition itself, it has a magic in it.

[1:18:10] Yes but I think also Violette that in Persia it was offset by the, it was washed in the blood of the martyrs. And believe me, that's a very good way of disentangling one belief from another, you see. And you haven't got that here. I don't think it's comparable. I don't mean we haven't anything to offer. Obviously we've got the Cause of God to offer. But I'm interested in thinking how one could perhaps offer it. That's why I'm asking people who've lived here much, much longer. We're just travelers. We don't know, you see. I've read about it, but I've never lived here.

[1:18:42] [Woman speaking] I don't even know if I have the answer, but I remember being impressed several years ago, Blackwell's and I were coming back from something and we had one believer, very strong active teacher who had been in the Faith even at that time for over ten years. And he was dead serious because I looked at him twice I didn't believe it. He said, "You know, I was out in such and such a region and on the corner there were these man standing and they became animals." And I thought come on, you know. This fella had some education and all, too. And, he said, "Well, what about that?" You know what do we Baháʼís, would we... And so Blackwell said "no," so and so. "You didn't really see them change into animals" because there is this belief too in voodoo, to a certain extent. "What you really saw"- see now he didn't tell and he didn't put them down, he said, "what you saw were their real nature, their spiritual nature. How debased they were. You saw the animal in them at that moment." And he sort of built upon this, "you were spiritually able to see their true natures at that moment." And then he went on from that and had a sort of a deepening.

[1:19:57] Well what effect did that have on the man?

[1:20:00] [Woman continues] He said, "Yes, you know what? I think you're right." That's what he said. And I think that he was able to put aside at least that particular belief that human beings actually do become animals, you know, etc. And because he did go around, he's been actively teaching over 15 years, I believe that he then was able to perhaps convince a few others in the provinces. I might say something else...

[1:20:32] Well, I think what Violette said is very, very pertinent about the picture. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá himself said, He said, "Put my picture in your home." The Master himself said to "put my picture in your home" and put the Greatest Name. Now if they're going to say that this is Khomeini, for God's sake at this time don't put his picture in their homes, you see.

[1:21:00] [Woman continues] Many people want the Greatest Name as the protection against [overlapping dialogue].

[1:21:03] Well all right. And that's what it is, you see. But there you really have got, if you like, a talisman. Therefore, by all means, they should be given that. And I think that they should have a little possibility of having a Greatest Name, that maybe when Baháʼís are enrolled they should be given the Greatest Name that they can put in their room.

[1:21:22] [Woman continues] Well now there are Haitian believers that are upset about that.

[1:21:24] Why?

[1:21:25] [Woman continues] that they wanted... They said they only wanted Baháʼís and non-Baháʼís to, they wanted to protect their house from voodoos...

[1:21:21] Who? Non-Baháʼís too? Well, why shouldn't they have any...?

[1:21:33] [Woman continues] Non-Baháʼís too, and our prayer books too.

[1:21:31] As it comes from God, there isn't anything in the whole Baháʼí religion that a non-Baháʼí can't take away if he wants it. It's free.

[1:21:42] [Woman speaking] No, I understand. The feeling though, and it's not so much as... It's not say, "it wasn't me first", you see. This came from another Haitian believer. I'm upset the only reason they went to put our Greatest Name up there is so that the wangas[?] and the bakas[?] and everything won't enter into their house and harm them. They're not interested in Bahá’u’lláh.

[1:22:07] [Audience member 1] Well maybe that's what happens.

[1:22:09] [Audience member 2] It's in my house for protection.

[1:22:12] [Woman continues] But you believe in Bahá’u’lláh. It means something to you.

[1:22:15] Yes, but I don't think that you should deny people. I think that... I've come to the conclusion, and I come to it only during the last what, eight or ten years of my life that we've had the wrong idea. We have had the idea to a great extent that here I've got the religion of God, the whole thing you see. Now I have to give you that and you have to take the whole thing. Well, if you take the whole thing, you're obviously taking what God has given the human race for today and for 1,000 years. But I don't think that's good enough for the world today. I think that I should open my hands and say, "Here's the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh. Here's the religion of Bahá’u’lláh. Take anything you want. If you can't take it all, then look at these jewels and take what jewel you can." You see because they're dying. They are dying. They haven't anything, the people. They are dying. Literally, the world is dying in front of our eyes. So if they can only take one thing, universal peace or they're going to believe in an international language or they want the Greatest Name hanging on their wall or they want the picture of the Master, they want the prayer book or so on. Let them take anything, anything, anything because they are desperate and they should be giving it if it's only a crumb of food. Let them have that food that we have to offer. And that wasn't my attitude years ago. I always thought you had to give the whole works, you know. Here's a whole Baháʼí religion. Now you've taken it and become a Baháʼí like me. But I think that we should give them anything they can take. Take the whole thing, this is what will be their salvation and their protection. But we should let them have anything that they can take from the Faith. Let that teach them the... give them the rosary: 95 beads, "Alláh-u-Abhá" 95 times. If it comes to the repetition Violette was talking about give them that. This is in the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh. He says say the Greatest Name 95 times and we all had rosaries. When I was a child I had a rosary and said it 95 times very often, you see. Tell them they can say the remover of difficulties if they are afraid. God suffices all things above all things. Whatever it is, let them have what they can take, you see. I don't know whether they have a very small prayer book in French. Have you a little tiny prayer book in French? Let them have that, you see. People who have died, then copy the prayer for the dead. One of those nice ones will not deny thy guest, you know. Even an ordinary man when he has a guest in his house, he treats him kindly. This is your guest. It's gone up there now. Will you please be kind to him because he's your guest now. All right, it's a beautiful prayer for the dead, let them have that. Let the people have whatever they can take.

[1:25:04] [Man speaking] Along the lines of that I'd like to tell a very short story that Margaret Sears told to me. Somebody very dear to me was in trouble, was feeling very troubled. Margaret gave them some prayers to say and this person said, "I don't believe in prayers. I don't believe in God." Margaret said, "It doesn't make any difference whether you do or not, use the prayers anyway." And I think, I don't know whether this person did. I certainly hope they did, because I believe that it will do some good. And I think the Greatest Name above the door, even the non-believers, exactly the same thing. It's just what you said about offering them any jewel.

[1:25:42] It doesn't have to be above the door. Shoghi Effendi said put the Greatest Name in the highest point in the room. This is Oriental. We don't know anything about it in the West and when I was married, I got my things from Montreal and my bookcase and my picture of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá that I loved, and I put it in the same relationship to my bed that had been in in Montreal. And here was my bookcase, and there was the picture of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and I could see Him when I went to sleep at night and when I woke up in the morning. And the Guardian after he fixed this thing he came in, he said, "You put the Master at your feet?" And I said, "What? You know, what? My feet?" He picked up the picture and he said, "The Master must be at the head of the room. The place of honor, you see. We don't know these things in the West. What do we know about manners? Or place of honor? Or distinction or anything? Nothing. Zero. So he came and put it here. Of course it meant that I never saw Him again, either when I woke up or I went to sleep. [Laughter]. But at least He was up where he aught to be.

[1:26:47] Then the Greatest Name. The Greatest Name should be at the top of the room. And I don't know why the Baháʼís have a passion for putting it over the kitchen door. [Laughter]. As if it was sort of going to drip something at you when you went through the door. You know, I really don't get it at all. I've seen it all over North America, I just can't get it. I cannot understand why the Greatest Name should be over the door. Put it up here, it's the top of your room. Put it on this wall. And by all means, let the people have the Greatest Name in their houses too but it doesn't quite solve the problem. It's things that we can do, but it doesn't solve the very, very deep problem of how psychologically to free the people of their fears. You see they've got two things crossed: fear, a certain amount of superstition which goes with the black magic and the white magic. But then they've got something religious crossed with a thing called voodooism. It's probably very much easier to break them of the Catholic Church than to break them of voodoo.

[1:28:00] [Woman speaking] I think there's a question here, and then over there, and then here, and then there.

[1:28:03] All right. You supervise it. You referee.

[1:28:08] [Man speaking] Yeah, this business of giving. In Haiti, the churches have given the people everything so the people associate religion with giving. So one of the first things you're asked when you go into a village often is, "Well, what are you gonna give us?" You know? "So you've given us the Baháʼí Faith. Now what?" You know? "Are you gonna build us a center?" Or something. "Are you gonna give us books? We need books. Are you gonna give us pictures?" You know. And so I think we've had a tendency to be very cautious on this, you know. We tend to try and sell things if possible. And with the result, I find that people don't get anything because they don't have any money to buy it, so they don't get anything. [Laughter]. So maybe you have a few words of wisdom on this.

[1:28:55] No, I think everything has its reasonableness. I don't think we should... The people in this country have got more beggars than I've seen since I left Egypt God knows when. And I think that we don't want to make people beggars and we don't want to encourage them to be beggars. Well, you told me yourself you're a Babylonian, not an Egyptian. [Laughter].

[1:29:18] [Man speaking] Because we babble so much.

[1:29:24] Anyway, my point is that I think that we should, we can't give them things because we haven't got things to give. And we don't believe in buying Baháʼís, anyway. But there's no reason why we shouldn't give them the Greatest Name to put in their homes or the picture of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá to put in their homes or a little prayer book. And I would think that that was the least the National Assembly could do. And I have something else to say and that is for Pete's sake, it won't have any effect but I'm gonna say it anyway, stop saying declared. I cannot endure it any longer. I hate it with all my soul. Bahá’u’lláh declared himself in 1863 because He had something to say. And He made a statement that He was, you know, whatever it was. And Shoghi Effendi said we don't even know what He said. But the point is the Báb declared himself to Mullá Ḥusayn. And we do have pretty clear idea from Nabil's narrative what He said, it was a declaration. But this word of having declared, and declaration card is driving me mad. And sometimes I get so fed up with it that I say it's one of the main reasons I'd like to die, so I don't have to hear it anymore. It's awful. Go back to Shoghi Effendi, I put it all in The Priceless Pearl but nobody didn't go in... [Audience member: We didn't read it another person: I did.] But nobody paid any attention to it.

[1:30:51] Shoghi Effendi said enrolled, enlisted under the banner of Bahá’u’lláh, embrace the Faith, converted. The only place he ever said declared, was in the middle of a big paragraph in these original what we call Baháʼí administration letters. And it's buried in the middle of that, "for those who have declared their belief in Bahá’u’lláh" and he goes on to say something else. And this is the age of cliches and the Americans, God bless them, they got ahold of this word "declared" and they took it out and now declared, declared. "I declared, he declared, we declared, you declared, they declared." And just, you know, like a rubber stamp. Driving me mad. I fight against it tooth and nail, but it has very little effect so. Remember that you're not in a minority, you go on using it. I can't stand it.

[1:31:50] [Woman speaking] I don't want to, as they say break the subject, but I have a question I'd very much like to know about the Greatest Holy Leaf. So if anybody has another question that has more to do about it?

[1:32:02] Well, why don't you just ask?

[1:32:04] [Woman speaking] Okay. Could she read and write?

[1:32:08] Oh my God, first...

[1:32:09] [Woman speaking] Okay wait a minute. It's not a dumb question because in The Chosen Highway...

[1:32:17] Didn't you read my book?

[1:32:20] [Woman speaking] Which one?

[1:32:21] The Priceless Pearl.

[1:32:22] [Woman speaking] Yes.

[1:32:23] Didn't you read where I said the Greatest Holy Leaf wrote letters to Persia about the Guardian?

{{t|1:32:28} [Woman speaking] Well then what does that mean in the... See? This is my question, okay?

[1:32:34] Go on. No it's not you I'm [?]. Go on.

[1:32:42] [Woman speaking] Yeah, the [?] somehow..

[1:32:46] What did she say?

[1:32:47] [Woman speaking] She said that the Greatest Holy Leaf didn't have time to go to school, and I just couldn't believe it.

[1:33:01] What's that got to do with going to school? You can read and write. I've been to school what three times in my life, and I don't think I'm very uneducated. So what? You could learn to read and write without being in school.

[1:33:13] [Woman speaking] Right, you can develop yourself. And we all have the responsibility to develop ourselves to serve the Faith, to serve God as best we can. Is that right?

[1:33:26] Well I would suppose so.

[1:33:28] [Woman speaking] Okay because that statement in The Chosen Highway made it seem like... I just couldn't... See I don't know, the Greatest Holy Leaf is to me...

[1:33:38] Well, I'll tell you the House of [audio cuts off]

[1:33:40]- [Man speaking] ...breaking traditions like a religion because before I came to Haiti I spent two years between Louisiana and Alabama. That's where all of my mother's people are. And I think that part of the country, like Haiti, is a place where people in deeply steeped into tradition and religion. And something that has worked there that I think you mentioned before in Africa, or that happened in Africa was going to the elders because just like in places in Africa and just like in the provinces here in the South, you have illiteracy. You have people that seem like they don't listen. You have people that are labeled stupid. And you have people that hold very firmly to their beliefs. And you can go out and you can teach someone, an individual and they can say they believe you but when they go home to get the money to go out to a party or get the money to buy ice cream, they're gonna open up the Bible because that's where the money's kept. But if you go like, there was a town in Georgia where the preacher was taught. A very simple, simple thing and I believe it was in Georgia, I can't remember the town, and automatically the whole town became Baháʼís, everyone.

[1:35:32] They followed him because he could talk to them. He could talk them.

[1:35:37] [Man speaking] And it's so strange and yet so simple because if I'm a member of this community and someone comes up to me, I'm going to say, "Yes, this is an excellent idea but Rev. so and so said..." But whereas, if Reverend so and so comes to me and, I guess being the human that I am I'm gonna follow him. You know, always going to look to a leader. Then there's no question, the Bible is put down and I guess so and so comes tomorrow with who knows what. That would be followed. I think that that's at least one of the great answers is working with the leaders.

[1:36:23] I think that's very true. Very, very true whether it's the elders or whether it's a minister, maybe a minister would or would not become a Baháʼí because that's very difficult because often it's their livelihood, you see. But if they would, look at the great ministers that have been Baháʼís in the Baháʼí Faith, Townshend, Howard Ives, some wonderful Baháʼís. I don't want you to feel bad about that declared business because some of my colleagues in Haifa still use it so I had no effect on anybody... [Laughter].

[1:37:00] [Woman speaking] Who's next? Paul?

[1:37:03] [Different woman speaking] You know I have here somebody telling me the people here have faith, but they don't fear God, you see?

[1:37:16] Well they sure fear something if they've got that much voodoo.

[1:37:19] [Woman continues] Okay, they fear the voodoo thing but they don't fear God. And if we could bring their fearness - I don't know how you say that in English - to our God, I don't know. I just you know, you were asking about, you know, how can we get them away from voodoo, you know. That's one thing. They don't fear God. They always believe that God is good. He will always protect them whatever they do. They are protected by God.

[1:37:45] Yes, but the reason they believe in it is they fear the voodoo gods. They say deweybong[?], but they're afraid of neaba[?].

[1:37:55] [Woman continues] But then they don't believe in one God at all.

[1:37:58] [Audience member] Yes they do. They told everybody.

[1:38:00] They do. They do. It comes down, they have a supreme god. But it's these animus gods really, the things that are real to them.

[1:38:16] [Violette speaking] Khánum, don't you think the answers is the children. I mean, in the long run if you want to break anything like that you are not going to be able to do it with the adults, but you will be able to do it with the children. I think this is why the House of Justice stresses so much importance on education of Baháʼí children on this planet.

[1:38:38] But Violette we're talking about villages. How are you going to introduce it in.... You cannot take the villagers children and make them Baháʼís, I mean just like that under the nose of the whole village with the Catholic Church here and the voodoo priest there.

[1:38:53] [Violette speaking] No, but I'm talking about the villagers who become Baháʼís and they have children.

[1:38:58] Then they must have children's classes. But we want to convert the people of Haiti to the Baháʼí Faith. We can't wait until these Baháʼís children become Baháʼís. You see what I mean? You have to do everything, Violette as you know. [lengthy phrase in Persian] We have to do it on all fronts at the same time.

[1:39:23] [Woman speaking] What about you, would you have a question the gentleman in the white?

[1:39:27] [man speaking] I have one small page of comments which is part of the consultation.

[1:39:33] Did you just write this all down?

[1:39:35] [Man speaking] Well I would have forgotten them if I hadn't.

[1:39:36] Oh, all right. Excuse me.

[1:39:41] [Man speaking] I have a Baháʼí friend whose been in lots of parts of the world and he's an anthropologist. His name is [?]. I don't know if you know.

[1:39:49] Yeah, I do know.

[1:39:50] [Man speaking] And he's seen cases, or he knows of several cases where people have had spells put on them. And he says, "Why don't we instead of shoving this all under the rug, why don't we just get people together to pray for people who have spells on them?" There was someone who was pioneering here, a couple who was pioneering here in Haiti and then they had a spell put on their daughter. And she absolutely could not move, won't respond in any way for about three years or something. Then when the House of Justice found out about it they started saying prayers and in a couple of days, she was normal. So you know, these prayers have a lot of power. Okay, so that's one thing I think we can do. And that can help undo some of this here. So that's the first plan. Next part. All right. I have here that voodoo is.... really goes back to a kind of ancestor worship. The gods of voodoo were originally human beings. And then their certain characteristics were taken from them, and then different people who had kind of similar characteristics kind of blended in with them. And they lost their individuality and they became sort of gods. And if we emphasize to them, to the Haitians the important of the people who have already died and the importance of prayer for ancestors, the importance of, you know, the people who have gone before us, and stuff we can we can hold on to the important parts of the connection with the town. So thank you.

[1:41:28] No, I think that... I've thought of that. I think that's very true.

[1:41:32] [Man speaking] And finally, here's my last one related thing. All right. In the case of the Baptist, I don't know if we have much hope of converting the preachers and so on or bringing them over to our side particularly much, but there are some religious groups that are much more open to the Faith, and especially the Episcopalians. Even at the very highest levels in Haiti, the Episcopalians are very open to the Faith, very accepting.

[1:41:59] And many Catholics become Baháʼís.

[1:42:02] [Man speaking] Yeah, so we can even talk to the priests. And if they don't, if the Episcopalian and Catholic priests, and if they don't become Baháʼís, it's very often they'll encourage their own parishioners to look into the Faith. And I feel quite sure from what I, you know, from conversations I've had with high rankings Episcopalians. So those are my comments, thank you.

[1:42:24] Well I think that... I really, it's awfully hard for me to believe that somebody put a spell on somebody's child for a three year period and the House of Justice prayed and they got over it. I think that... my understanding from African travels is that you have to believe in these things before they can really affect you, you see. A great deal of this magic and these bad spells depend on your faith in them, and if you believe in them.... I mean everybody knows in Africa that a spell is put on a man and he dies. And the spell may be put here and he hears that in his village, that spell has been put on him and he dies in the capital a hundred miles away. And nobody gives him anything. He doesn't take any poison and he dies, you see.

[1:43:19] Now I don't think there's any doubt about this phenomena, but it is based on a terrific belief that he will die, you see. He's conditioned to it psychologically and through heredity and environment that that can happen and it's going to happen to him. I doubt very much that it would happen to a child of a pioneer. The child may have gotten a bug in the water that had a paralyzing effect on him and the prayers of the House of Justice healed it because we have living in Haifa it seems so many times that the prayers of the Universal House of Justice like the prayers of Shoghi Effendi have had such a tremendous effect on those who've asked for prayers, you see. So I can believe that the prayer would cure the child through the mercy of Bahá’u’lláh and the intervention of the House of Justice. But I really find it awfully hard to believe that a witch doctor succeeded in putting a spell on a pioneer's child that lasted three years. That's a little stiff for me to believe. That he should put it on a Haitian child, yes because everybody in the child's family including the child and all the relatives in the whole of Haiti believes that he can. So then that power of belief could have that effect. I think that's quite possible.

[1:44:34] [Woman speaking] That's what I mean when I say that they have fear but they have fear of that kind of fear. You know they don't fear God. They fear these beings.

[1:44:44] Well the Baháʼís don't fear God either. The Baháʼís don't fear God, I often think it'd be much better if they did. Bahá’u’lláh says fear God, O people. Fear God. There is both the love and the fear of God is taught in the Baháʼí teachings, but we don't teach it to the Baháʼís. I think they'd behave much better if they were a little more afraid of God. And I don't know the Haitians, I mean the North Americans and the Europeans and everybody else. We are not afraid of God and consequently we do not behave ourselves good. It's all love, He's such a loving, loving, loving, loving, loving, loving lover. Nothing to be afraid of, you see. But I don't know how you could go around with people that are already so afraid of their ancestral gods, so to speak, and then try and superimpose another fear, greater on that. I wouldn't think psychologically that would work here. But I do think that there must be other approaches to it, you see. We have to think of them.

[1:45:49] [Man speaking] Something that we said, something that Mrs. Nakhjavani said, it kind of all weaves in. Something that I've been wanting to say. As I say, marrying my wife has been a real eye-opener for me.

[1:46:06] It is for most men. [Laughter & chatter].

[1:46:20] [Man speaking] Okay, well enough said on that. But anyway [?] was that I've seen in a couple of places people asking me for Greatest Names because they were going to start a business. They had already painted up the Masons sign. They had already painted up a number of crosses and just to be sure, they'd be protected they wanted a Greatest Name, too. In another case, two other cases, a person with a picture of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá was using the picture of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá to put spells on other people. Now, yes. Now, so I have since been very bothered...

[1:47:05] Did he succeed? [Laughter].

[1:47:08] [Man speaking] I didn't stay around to find out by the way. You know. But the point was that it was a black magic type of thing. And since then I have been extremely reluctant to give, you know to procure Greatest Names and pictures of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá for anyone who isn't going to respect them. And this to me is important. Prayers, yes. I'll give prayers to somebody, but Greatest Names, especially the Greatest Name to put up next to the Masonry symbol next to the cross as a protection against whatever it is is gonna keep them from making money. I've been very reluctant to do, and I don't think personally this is a way to get to people, to strive out that psychological attachment which has been fed to them since their mother's milk. And it's been fed to them in everything that goes on in this society. Everything from school, from their relatives. And you should hear my wife and brother-in-law talk about the various things they say their friends have seen. And today in the USAID office a very educated Haitian who has lived in the States for like 15 years was in the office today, we were talking about doing survey research in Haiti, which is another real real trip, getting straight information from people. It's a trip anywhere. And he said that even one of the American AID officers actually saw with his own eyes a cow giving birth to a human baby. And this man was deadly serious about this, see. He was not joking, he was telling me the truth. And it's an American AID official who was one of these, you know. I don't know where he is now.

[1:48:55] And he saw it?

[1:48:56] [Man speaking] Yeah the American saw it. And I know this American who saw it too and I find it very hard to believe that. But anyway, thing is that this whole, I don't believe myself that giving the Greatest Name or giving ‘Abdu’l-Bahá's picture in itself is gonna make many inroads. Rather, people are gonna take those things and use them in the way they're used to using them, unless somehow instructed or as to what the significance of them is.

[1:49:29] I think that you can't prevent people. I mean anybody could go to the Baháʼí center or to your home and they could see the Greatest Name on the wall and they could say that's a safe thing. They could see the ring stone emblems and they say, "That's a good thing. I'll put that up in my house." And they go home and copy it. No reasons, or nothing to prevent them from doing it. I think that as you say, if you think somebody's going to use it for, I don't know, a lottery ticket to bring you luck or something, it's perhaps better not to give it to them. But generally speaking, I don't think that would be the reaction of most poor Baháʼís. I think they'd like to have the picture of the Master because it was the Master. They'd like to have the Greatest Name because it was the Greatest Name. Just as simple as that. And as the Master himself said to put this in your home is a protection. Well, I would just feel that one could do that. But to get back to the calf giving birth to a human being, I don't believe that the calf gave birth to a human being but I'm not sure that the man didn't see it because, you know the Indian rope trick which was done for so many centuries in India and so many reliable witnesses said that they actually would see the boy go up the rope, you see. Well, that was a form of hypnotism or of hallucination that was induced perhaps by a stronger mind on somebody who wasn't aware that for the moment something was being reflected into their mind. And I don't think that there's any doubt, I mean look at all the tremendous research that's going on. What do they call it the super century business?

[1:51:04] [Woman speaking] ESP?

[1:51:05] Yes. [Audience talking about ESP].

[1:51:10] One person at a time. ESP. Yes, this ESP, you see. I don't think there's any doubt whatsoever that such things are possible, you see. And they're probably possible in Haiti just the way they were in India. So that you don't have to say that the man didn't see it. You have to say that the cow didn't do it. That's the difference, you see? And you have to be so careful to make that distinction. You don't have to throw the baby out with the bathwater in other words. You can say, "Look, you're wrong because calves do not give birth to human beings. And that's an impossibility scientifically, but not at all impossible that you shouldn't have been induced to seeing what you see." If you can get that distinction, get them to make the distinction but then you've got to have some way of getting them to do it mentally. You have to talk to them, depending if they had any possible scientific knowledge and so on.

[1:52:07] [Man speaking] Well, there was a lady in Haiti I talked to her about the Baháʼí Faith. And she said it was very nice and she asked me if I was planning on teaching this to the country people. I said yes, it's for all the people. Then she said, "Well, the Baháʼí Faith I heard about it from other people. This is not well." And she said the Baháʼí Faith is very good religion. It's too good for these people.

[1:52:40] Well that's ridiculous remark.

[1:52:42] [Woman speaking] Did she become Baháʼí?

[1:52:43] [Man speaking] No.

[1:52:44] [Woman speaking] It was too good for her I think. [Laughter].

[1:52:48] [Man speaking] But you know what you had said earlier on about deepening...

[1:52:55] About what?

[1:52:57] [Man speaking] Deepening, or to learn more of the Faith is by teaching. And I think when the Haitian people themselves go out and are encouraged to teach, there are deepenings, there are learnings. Sometimes they may not teach the right things in the right way. Like for one trip that Farhad and I, we went with a Haitian teacher who had been teaching this locality in [?] where no other pioneer had been there before. And whenever he went out on these teaching trips, he came back with declarations.

[1:53:49] [Audience corrects] Enrollments. [Laughter].

[1:53:54] At least say enrollments.

[1:53:56] [Man speaking] Signed cards.

[1:53:57] Just tonight for me, enrollments. I hate signing your card. You can't make a connection with Almighty God through signed a card.

[1:54:05] [Man speaking] Then he had to come back with these signed cards.

[1:54:08] What?

[1:54:09] [Man speaking] He had to come back with these signed cards because if he did not, he did not do the teaching. And he could not prove that he got some teaching work done. He could not get his fare paid, you see.

[1:54:23] Well, that's logical.

[1:54:26] [Man speaking] But even though they might not teach the right way, they [promised centers?]. You know? We should not put them down for that.

[1:54:32] Oh please, wow. You remind me of a meeting I had in Africa. Remember Violette? We went to a meeting and we arrived and it was the other end of nowhere. And special preparations and the villagers had put up a whole pavilion for us and decked it all up. Palm branches to keep us in the shade and vines all around, all the columns supporting it and God knows what. And we had a big meeting. And then they said, "Where is the school that the traveling teacher promised us three months ago? And you said that we were going to have a school and that you would build a school here." And I said, "But surely they must have told you that if possible and if you were able to help contribute that we might be able to open a school." They said, "No. They promised to come here and build a school and that was three months. Where is the school that you promised us?" My, that was a nice meeting. [Laughter].

[1:55:36] [Woman speaking] But do they have the school now?

[1:55:37] Of course not! How could they have? National Assembly didn't have the kind of money to build that school way off the other end of nowhere. To me it's outrageous, you see. You have to be careful what people teach and promise. And I'm sorry to say that this was an extremely well-known Baháʼí teacher.

[1:55:56] [Woman speaking] We have an area right outside of Jacmel that has very, very strong Baháʼís in all the area for a few years that passed. And I strongly believed they were strong and active to eventually earn their center. Though when they realized they didn't have the center, they all became absolutely inactive except one who still continues.

[1:56:16] Now wait a moment. Back up. Why did they want a center?

[1:56:19] [Woman speaking] They wanted a center because the protestant church has a center and they only had a lot for that center, it was very embarrassing for them.

[1:56:27] Well that's human. That was I think quite a noble aspiration. And I think that if they had been encouraged more, maybe the National Assembly could have helped them the way they do in Africa to have a center, they would do part of it and the NSA would do part of it because that's what they do all over Africa. Say you build a mud waffle hut and we'll put on a permanent roof for you, you see. I mean, after all, meet them halfway. I think that is a perfectly legitimate attitude on the part of those villagers. They wanted it, you see. There's something in the, I think - Violette you correct me if I'm wrong. I think there's something in the African nature that wants to pray to God especially. And I've seen it in Africa and I've seen it in the Caribbean islands. They don't want to pray to God. We don't mind. We'll all pray to God here tonight perfectly happily, but they don't feel that way about it. They feel that a place should be just for worship, just for mention of God, you see. Just for their prayer house, their meeting place. Now the church has given them that, and we haven't been able to so far. So the only thing we can't build are the local temples yet because we haven't got permission. We're still building continental temples. Eventually, I hope during my lifetime I live to see one local Baháʼí temple built before I die, I'd just love to. Maybe I'll see a national one built before I die. But the point is that they want a place to meet, and that's a very logical thing. And it would have a great effect on them probably if they had it. So that they should want it and long for it and strive for it and beg for it and be very upset and disillusioned when they don't get it seems to me perfectly human. That doesn't mean to me they're not good Baháʼís. If anything it makes me think they were good Baháʼís. You see what I mean here?

[1:58:22] [Man speaking] Where does the money come from the national side?

[1:58:24] Well then I don't know. I don't know where this NSA gets its money from. I suppose it gets it from the House of Justice. But the point is that it's got surely to spend some money. I mean the darn NSA must have some money in the country. Hasn't it? You're on the NSA.

[1:58:40] [Man speaking] Not very much.

[1:58:41] Does it get any from the House of Justice?

[1:58:42] [Man speaking] Oh yeah, it relies pretty well, 90%.

[1:58:45] Well, all right. And then it has to spend it wisely, you see. That's its duty.

[1:58:49] [Man speaking] I imagine though it's had a very serious problem recently.

[1:58:51] Oh, are you telling me. My God, that's more than a serious problem. That's a marvelous problems?

[1:58:56] [Woman speaking] Have you ever had these in Haiti or, you know, in partnership building a center, part of it in a village, the villagers and part... [?].

[1:59:09] [Woman speaking] We have tried this over a number of years, and for the most part, it has not worked out. It was thought that the Assembly should pick up the entire tab. The places where the Assembly has picked up the tab, rented property, and it's been a number of areas for an assembly, we have had problems too. And they're very serious problems.

[1:59:34] You mean before you got the center or after you got it. What do you mean by perhaps?

[1:59:38] [Woman speaking] After we got the center.

[1:59:39] What kind of problems?

[1:59:40] [Woman speaking] Okay, we've had, one of the last problems, Arnold is fully aware of that one, one community we've lost some of the so-called stronger believers. Not stronger spiritually but in training and in ability to reach other people, money. In another case, we had one individual use the center for a depot and we think that there was something not quite right going on in it, but no meetings. And like this, in each area. In another case it was halfway up and then something, I don't know what, went wrong. But in every single case where the assembly has picked up the tab for a center for a year or so, we have in some cases lost the community. We have... I'm trying to think, are we paying for any? [Discussing if they are paying for rent on any center right now...].

[2:00:43] You see, maybe this is why I think this consultation or discussion is so valuable because in many, many countries this is the answer. It evidently isn't the answer in Haiti. So then there have to be other kinds of answers, you see. Because this country is one that's entirely begging and entirely living on charity almost exclusively. It's like this. I've seen more beggars in this country than I've seen for years, and the whole country is begging. And the whole country is receiving handouts from all over the world. So maybe that this is the wrong thing to do here. It's the purpose of, you know, thinking about these things.

[2:01:23] [Discussion about who's question would be next].

[2:01:30] Well come along, let's go down the line.

[2:01:33] [Woman speaking] I'm baffled that the idea of voodoo... somebody recently that I was talking to for the first time about the Faith said that he felt that the voodooists would be most receptive to the Faith. And I remember being in the - would he mention Episcopalians? By chance I was thinking of a nun who's been here for years. Thirty years, maybe? She knows Julius, the only contact I know she had at the Faith. She was present when some people were talking about the Faith, non-Baháʼís and very positively, and I didn't know what her reaction would be. And she said, "You know, the Baháʼí Faith is good for Haiti. It brings love and love eliminates fear." That's sort of the thought I had while we're talking. It was such a small effect now maybe but I think the most we can do as pioneers is, well the Greater Plan of God is working to clear away all the darkness of the fear through education and other non-Baháʼí things that we can try to -

[2:02:33] [Audience member] Sister Joan just the other day again said something quite good about this too.

[2:02:35] [Woman speaking] Uhuh. Said we can try to associate with Baháʼís, with Haitian Baháʼís and show that religion is something which is loving and purposeful and joyful. Because I think in voodooism from the little that I know so far, it doesn't have a concept really, it's a play of forces, I take this god and my god, it's a power struggle. But as far as I've seen, there's almost no morality to it. It's power.

[2:03:05] Oh no, I don't think there's any ethics in it at all, if any the other way.

[2:03:09] [Woman speaking] The idea that religion is something to work at, strive for and it has the moral aspect. I think that's what we can bring maybe at this point.

[2:03:21] [Audience member] By the way the villagers don't call it voodoo.

[2:03:23] What do they call it?

[2:03:24] [Audience member continues] Via ba-guy[?] which is old thing.

[2:03:30] That's as good term as any, isn't it? That's what it is, old thing. Looks pretty old. You had something to say?

[2:03:37] [Woman speaking] The little I've seen and the little I know psychology I think that the people here have had enough fear, and I think what they need is love. And that only by consistent effort and by kindness and by showing love, probably over years and years and years will they begin to realize that they can trust this love. The love that they've received probably through the missionaries is the kind where they've be handed things, and they don't know what to do with that. They don't really know what love is, and so that if it's going to work, I think we have to have love as well as justice. And the balance has to be maintained or they'll think this love isn't any different from the love from the missionaries.

[2:04:22] Well what do you mean by justice? Why did you put justice in there?

[2:04:26] [Woman continues] Because the love that they've know is something that's soft and something that is handing them something that really doesn't accomplish anything. And they can walk all over it. And if you have justice as well -

[2:04:40] But what do you mean by justice now? You are using the word justice, what do you mean by that word now in this context?

[2:04:47] [Woman continues] They have to be responsible as well, that they have to be brought to task if something happens -

[2:04:53] They have to what?

[2:04:54] [Woman continues] Be brought to task. If they're not fulfilling their part of the bargain.

[2:04:58] How?

[2:04:59] [Woman continues] If for instance if they abuse the funds.

[2:05:02] How?

[2:05:04] [Woman continues] Then they should be brought before the Assembly or whatever the role is. And be shown the right way. That things shouldn't be let slide. Like I know the pioneers here will pay money to someone and then they won't get it back and nothing will happen. Or other things will happen that just continue to happen and nobody says anything.

[2:05:21] Well they probably shouldn't pay the money in the first place, you see. The pioneers should have been more wise. I think the pioneers can be extremely foolish. I think that they can aggravate the situation because I think that in their... that most of the pioneers come from affluent society. And they say oh these people are so desperately poor and they feel ashamed. They say, "Well, I have this and I have that. And I had this advantage and I have had an education. I've got a car. I've got this and the other thing so I can stand it." And then they start giving out charity too to people. And then the charity is abused or the loan is never repaid or they considered it just a handout and it would never occur to them to repay it and so on. And then you want to call them to task, as you say, which frankly it's our fault, not theirs you see. We are the ones that are at fault. But I think that this word justice, I can only tell you something that happened to me in my own marriage, That's why I asked you the question.

[2:06:35] When I was, first years in my marriage, we had of course a number of Persian servants in the house. And there were some kind of a squabble going on. And I felt that I had settled it. So I came upstairs and I told Shoghi Effendi that well that I'm very pleased because I had settled this thing with justice. He looked to me very cold and he said, "What do you know about justice?" [Laughter]. He said, "justice is my function. You don't know anything about justice. It's not your function at all." Now I shouldn't be unfair to people, but God forbid, I'm not going to deal with you with justice. I mustn't be unfair to you but I mete out justice to you? Oh no, that's not my function. And I learned that from Shoghi Effendi, you see? So that's why I took you up on the word. Because very often in our naïveté we think that now we're going to be just, you see. I've got a servant and the servant is [?] something or other, so I'm going to treat her with justice.

[2:07:39] [Woman speaking] Rúhíyyih Khánum you've got an ant.

[2:07:41] Where?

[2:07:41] [Woman continues] A bad one.

[2:07:42] Where?! [Laughter].

[2:07:43] [Audience chatter and laughter about the ant].

[2:08:13] ...It's better than being bitten. I've got enough bites... I counted 18 just from here to there the other day. I didn't even bother to count the other leg.

[2:08:22] [Man speaking] Is fairness just a weaker form of justice?

[2:08:25] No, I think that justice is almost you might say a legal function. Justice implies that you are going to deal with other people in a way that you're going to dole out reward and punishment and then this and that and the other thing. And that is not my function towards you. If the Universal House of Justice was dealing with the Baháʼí world with justice, we would all evaporate overnight. Don't fool yourselves. They're dealing with us with the essence of love. They're not being unjust to us. And they're not being unfair to us. But they are dealing with us with love because justice would break our backs like that [slapping noise]. Maybe you can stand justice, I can't. I'm not the kind of a Baháʼí that has reached the point in history where I can stand justice, not that kind of justice. Why do all these National Assemblies puff themselves up and say they're houses of justice when they can barely administer anything, and they think they're a house of justice? Of course they're not. That's the House of Justice and it's not as I say ever unjust to us. But it is not yet in its majesty dealing with the Baháʼí world and the world with justice because we're not ready for it. We can't stand it.

[2:09:50] Now, how much less can I deal out justice to you? You see what I'm getting at? Judge you? Reward you? Punish you?

[2:10:03] [Chatter about a cockroach in the room].

[2:10:32] [Audio skips] ...And I think one of the one of the best ways that people can understand what Bahá’í love is, is to see us together. You see, if they see us together they will feel the love between us as Baháʼís. And this is the best way of converting people to the fact that it can exist is is to show it, not talk about it. Talking about things is very cheap. Anybody can talk. But the point is to actually be able to demonstrate it in such a way that people feel this love. And I think that that is very, very important. And I think that gradually that love could drive out their fear. I think we have to attack it from all sides. But that's why I wanted to ask you what you meant by justice, you see, because I think to be fair to people and ask them to be fair to you, but justice is a very tricky thing. It's almost a legal function, you see. It's a very high, cold thing, justice. And I think that we don't quite understand what justice is. You know, it's very interesting we have the... I don't know what the instruction the House has given, because I haven't been home since I heard about this business of the problem with money here and the National Assembly, but I know in the past when there's been very serious things happen between Baháʼís and partnerships when one partner stole from the other, or you know serious things, financial things. Or things that could be taken to court that first the Guardian - it didn't happen perhaps as frequently because the Baháʼí world wasn't as big. And now the House of Justice asked the Baháʼís to settle this out of court, you see. Not to take it to the court and disgrace the Baháʼí Faith. Well, of course justice is that you go to court and go to jail. But they tried to settle these things in another manner, not a necessarily a legal manner to protect the reputation of the Faith in front of the non-Baháʼís and also, in some cases, to protect the Baháʼís themselves. You added something at the end there?

[2:12:50] [Man speaking] Oh yes. So it's about... the idea came when you were discussing the center. And I think that maybe through the process of education we can tell people or show people that if they want a center and the National Assembly is not able to provide the center that they are responsible. And it goes back again to this thing of everyone has been giving them in the past. And I've often marveled at the stories that I've read in Baháʼí News about the believers in Africa who willingly, seemingly willingly build their Baháʼí centers. And the Baháʼís here expect you to give it to them. And this runs through various aspects of the Faith. For example in [?] someone saw a prayer book and said, "Oh, this is very nice." And I made a comment that, "Yes this paperback prayer book is only five gourdes, which is equivalent to a dollar." And he said, "You mean you're selling prayer books?" He said, "Well, the other religions give prayer books." I say, "Well we have to print the prayer books and we don't have money to give them out. And the people who want to them usually have to buy them." He was shocked. Another Baháʼí came by who has a very good job and saw a prayer book that I had. He's not living in the city, but in the Port-au-Prince area. And he asked me if he could borrow my prayer book. And I said, "No, I'm sorry. I can't lend it to you but I did receive a special on prayer books for 60 cents. The same prayer book that was costing a dollar, we were able to buy them for 60 cents." He would not spend 60 cents for the prayer book. So I did not give it to him. And I think that we have to be firm in these things. In North America it was a common practice to give a prayer book to someone who came into the Faith but doing the same thing in Haiti in my view would only encourage this attitude of dependence. Even though it was only 60 cents and even though it was a prayer book and he needed to pray just like the rest of us and he had the money but would not spend it, would not spend 60 cents for a prayer book.

[2:15:34] [Woman speaking, mostly inaudible. Mentions expectations of others that she would give them something because she was white. Mentions she feels discouraged and wonders what to do about this. Said she was enthusiastic in the beginning but now 8 months later she is discouraged. Mentions she is at the point where she doesn't give or lend anymore. Says again she doesn't know what to do.]

[2:17:41] Well that's why I said I think Haiti is such a heartbreaking country. I think that if you want to look, I mean if you're all serious-minded pioneers, which I'm sure you are, and you have arisen to serve the people of the world through the Cause of God and to serve Bahá’u’lláh as pioneers, I think that you have come to a country that desperately needs to be served, you see. This country desperately needs the service of the Baháʼís. And it's a very hard country. But then, after all, gradually you have it. First they had no Baháʼís here and then they had some Baháʼís and now they have at least nominally 5,000 Baháʼís, that probably don't exist all of them [laughter]. No, they probably don't, realistically. But at least it's something to go on with. Maybe they exist more than we realize they do. We don't know. We can't judge, you see. Time will tell whether they existed. Many people all over the world that come into the Faith and drift out of the Faith exist, you see, as Baháʼís.

[2:18:50] I was telling the Baháʼís, I think it was in the last country, that we can't judge of these things because in San Domingo they got the same situation. They've got again 5,000 Baháʼís on the books, but they're not so sure whether they've got them or not. And I was telling them that in Mexico there was a very well-known journalist who was a Baháʼí 20 years ago. Nobody ever saw anything of him, became totally inactive, went off about his business, his family, his status and so on. He's the directing manager of one of the biggest dailies in the whole of Mexico, a popular paper. And suddenly about 3-4 weeks before we were to go to Mexico, this really is providential, he turns up and tells the National Assembly, "I'm sick of the whole thing. I want to be active as a Baháʼí again." So he arranged the - fundamentally only he did it - the interview with the president of Mexico, which next to my meeting the president of India was the most important politician I've ever met in my whole life, which is good for the Faith. It redounds on the Faith. What do I care whether I met him or what does the Faith care whether I met him, as long as somebody met him and he receive the Baháʼí officially, you see. And also meeting the Minister of Interior which was extremely important too because neither of these men seem to know anything about the Faith, least of all the persecutions in Persia and so on.

[2:20:29] Well, you tell me. For 20 years he just [audio cuts off']... the fact that it's good for the Baháʼís in Mexico and the faith in Central America and so on and so on, you see. So that we can't judge. We do not know. It's our job to teach. It's our job to be patient and loving. It's our job to try and find adaptations that will suit the need of the country, you see. Can you see Violette how anybody would really benefit by just giving more handouts in a country where everything is a handout? Because you had a lot of this in Africa.

[2:21:12] [Violette speaking] No. Except that I'm wondering if part of it, part of it is problem with begging, as you say, and handouts. But part of it is in the culture of the people, that everything they have they share. We are talking about you being pioneers or whites or whatever you call it, but amongst themselves probably they are used to share. A man goes into the home of his neighbor or his cousin or his relatives, whatever is in that house is his as well because this is the culture of [?]. This is how it is in Africa. When we were the first years, one of the first lessons that I remember we all learned when Enoch Olinga had just become a Baháʼí, and he went one morning, he used to have, the only time that they used to have deepening class was before Enoch went to his work. So Ali used to go very early in the morning to Enoch's house and they had an hour of reading and whatever and then he would take Enoch to his office. And this way, Enoch would save half an hour of going by bus. So one morning he was sitting in Enoch's room and he saw one man, Enoch went out to get washed and dressed, go to work and a man came in, and he didn't know who he was. He came and opened the cabinet, he found the island shirt of Enoch, he took it out, shook it, put it on, went out of the house! And he was very upset. He thought who was he? Was he a thief? He took, you know, he stole the clothes or something?

[2:22:55] [Violette continues] So when Enoch came he said, "Enoch! There was a man here and he took your shirt. He put it on and went out!" And Enoch said, "Oh, was he the fellow who looks such and such?" And Ali said yes. He said, "Oh it was my cousin." Ali said, "Oh, did you know why he took your shirt?" He said, "No, it doesn't matter. I have two shirts. One I have on, the other was extra. So he could take it." And then he said, this was what he told us, he said "Well that's how it is with us. If we have two shirts, one is extra so my cousin, my brother, my neighbor or whoever is around can take it."

[2:23:34] [Violette continues] Now if we make the mistake of thinking when the Haitian comes to the door and asks for a glass of milk or a match or something, we may think that he's begging but it also has another side. He may just think, "All right, she has got a full box of match, I haven't any. She can give me still." You see? It is not really vicious, begging, stealing or anything like that. It is just, to him, it's common justice and fairness. "You have enough. You can give me, I haven't got it." I don't say it's easy to have it all the time with you, but you know, I think instead of getting hurt that you are all the time [?] you can get a little bit of a consolation that maybe it's not just making[?] it. Maybe that's how is his country. Don't you say so Khanum?

[2:24:31] Violette, you know more than I do because you lived 12 years in Africa. A lot of the characteristics in this country are African.

[2:25:38] [Violette speaking] I know that it's a very hard thing. I know that many of us pioneers in Africa learn by trial and error; loaning money at the beginning. We all have the same way. I am sure you coming to Haiti feels the same, you see the poverty and your heart aches. And you think well all right, "I help. His child is sick. He needs money for the medicine or cannot pay for the school." And you give. The one thing we all of us, I have noticed this in pioneers anywhere in the third world, find the same thing: by giving, you will do harm. If you say all right, I give you as a loan because the man is not going to pay you back. He's not able to pay you back. So what he does, two things. Either he loses his self-respect and becomes even smaller in your eyes and in his own eyes or he disappears because he is too shy. He knows that you're going to ask him or you're going to look at him. He will not come back. If you find somebody that is really in need and your heart melts and tells you to help, give them and say, "Alright my friend, I give you this. You don't need to pay me back. I know you need it. Take it." If you really feel that he needs it, it's better to give outright as a gift than call it a loan. Because if you call it a loan, they'll leave the Faith. They don't come back.

[2:26:15] [Woman speaking] Violette in Haiti loan means gift. Someone says loan me, they mean give me. And we had no struggles[?] but we give it back anyway. No they're not gonna give it back. Loan means give.

[2:26:27] Well is that the way they are with each other too?

[2:26:30] [Male speaking] Yes.

[2:26:31] Alright then it isn't-

[2:26:32] [Woman continues] That's not true, Rúhíyyih Khánum. That's not true. They are like that... because we see it. We live in the streets with them. When they borrow from us, they never give back... In our community we made a rule that, you know, only borrow it for half an hour then I'm gonna come and get it in your house. But among themselves they borrow and eventually they return. An incident in Jacmel, I'm a child in a way that I love to read children's book like Ten Ten. I just adore them. And there is this something of a rumor running around the neighborhood. As soon as one of the kids gets one from school, he reads it and brings it to me.

[2:27:10] Isn't that cute.

[2:27:11] [Woman continues] And then the next morning, sharp before he goes to school, he says, "I'd like my book back." And they go in and take their book back and that book for the whole week travel from one Baháʼí house to the other. And the same child goes and actually say, "I'd like my book back." And he gets it back. So in certain things, we had no scruples in lending and we know we're gonna get it back. Other things we will not lend. One thing I will not lend is a Baháʼí prayer book. It's amazing. You might judge me wrong on this.

[2:27:43] No, no I see your point.

[2:27:44] [Woman continues] I would not lend the Baháʼí prayer book but I would lend milk, eggs, sugar and things like that. And they come back. Eggs will come back. Sugar will come back. Milk will come back. Prayer book won't come back.

[2:27:55] [Violette? speaking] I tell you with prayer books I learned something from Mary Collins?. She did something marvelous. If they want, she wouldn't give the book, but she encouraged and said, "Bring your paper, your notebook. Copy it, sit down here and copy it from my book."

[2:28:13] Make your compilation.

[2:28:15] [Violette? speaking] That's right.

[2:28:15] [Woman speaking] We tried that. It didn't work.

[2:28:17] [Another woman speaking] I just want to say that Lisa's suffering is unbelievable. It's really exceptional because she lives in this garage, you know. I mean, to me the people.... It's awful. It's a half a garage... To me okay, I give them prayer books, sometimes give them pencils. And I have a car and this and that, but they bring me mangoes and they bring me lemons. And it is reciprocal, you know, because I really want the mangoes and I really want the lemons. But I don't know, there's something, I don't know, what Lisa's going through is really awful.

[2:28:56] Well does she have to go through it indefinitely? Can't she get a decent place to live if you're gonna have her as a school teacher there?

[2:29:08] [Chatter, woman speaking] The school doesn't pay enough.

[2:29:09] Well what about all the other people that are teaching there?

{{t|2:29:13} [Woman speaking] They commute, and she doesn't have the physical strength to commute.

[2:29:17] Ah, it gets too tiring yes.

[2:29:19] [Audience member] Also there would be the housing...

[2:29:22] [Woman speaking] It's not too bad. It's not that bad.

[2:29:27] [Audience member] No one in this room would want to live there. Not even one, no.

[2:29:35] Well, it seems to me maybe some better solution can be found. Doesn't seam to me we all aught to lie down on the job. Make her a door that will close. Knock a window in the wall.

[2:29:51] [Woman speaking] Would it be improper for pioneers to combine some kind of a fund to assist her? I know the House would say that if you're deputized, you're not supposed to assist somebody else.

[2:30:00] If what??

[2:30:02] [Woman continues] If you are deputized on the funds... I'm sorry, international goals make the rules that if you are on the fund, a pioneer on the fund, you should not use that money for somebody else.

[2:30:12] Well it seems to me that's pretty reasonable. After all, they passed it on to you. You can't just pass it down the line. Then you say, "It's all gone. Give me some more."

[2:30:22] [Woman speaking] But those were independent friends. Can they work out some kind of a deal?

[2:30:26] Well I don't know. I should think if there's a carpenter, this boy's a nice carpenter, why can't you knock a hole in the wall and put a window in? Or don't you want a window? [Some chatter]. Well, I think it's getting awfully late here. Are you going back to where you live tonight? That's a long way. And then coming to the meeting tomorrow morning? The conference?

[2:30:52] [Woman speaking] Yes. At 8:30, yes.

[2:30:55] Don't come at 8:30 for God's sake.

[2:30:58] [Woman speaking] You won't be there. [Laughter].

[2:31:00] No... I mean, nobody else will either frankly. [Laughter and comments] Are there any more urgent calamities that have to be discussed?

[2:31:17] [Woman speaking] What time should we be there tomorrow?

[2:31:20] [Discussion about the time for the meeting].

[2:31:37] By this time you register and you praying and you get people together... I can come a little ahead of that. Somebody picks me up. I don't have to come at 10:00 I could come a little ahead. But I don't like to just be left at the loose end, you see. If there's something to come to I will arrive, but I don't want to arrive in a vacuum or chaos.

[audio cuts out']

[2:31:58] ....and we were meeting the Persian pioneer who was arranging this marvelous meeting in this large city that was not the capital. So we motored there in the land rover and we picked him up and met him at the hotel where we had said we would.

[2:32:11] [Woman speaking] He was Moroccan.

[2:32:13] Moroccan. And Violette took one look at him and she said, "You look very flushed." And she put her hand over on his head and she said, "You're burning up with fever." Said, "I think you've got malaria." So we took him to a pharmacy to get some [?]. What'd he faint in the street or something? [Laughter]. So we got him into the land rover and we took him to, this is part of my function, we drove him to the hospital. We got ahold of a doctor. We got him into a bed. We went out and got a big jug of nice fresh orange juice and put it beside the bed. We begged the nurses and everybody in the hospital to take care of us, he said, If you go to such and such supermarket Mr. [?] is going to take care of you. We went and found the man in the supermarket. And he walked out with us around him into a big enclosed square surrounded by houses. And he said, Now the meeting is going to be here at six o'clock and as soon as the supermarket closes at seven o'clock I will come and all the Baháʼís are coming at six o'clock in the villages and everything. So we sat there and we waited and we waited and we waited and we waited and we waited and we waited. And it began to get dark and nobody came. And two ducks and one mother hen with three pullets came. And that was the extent of the meeting. So nothing more happened and it was a woman cooking her dinner over in the corner. I went over, I said, "[?] parle français". So I said, "if anybody ever turns up, tell them we had to go back to the capital." Then she said, "Oui." And then we left. [Laughter, someone in the audience asks if she was Haitian]. And then the next thing we heard was what a marvelous meeting... You know that so many hundreds of people have turned up. They'd had a marvelous meeting, my hat. Anyway, I told the House of Justice in my report, I said that was my all high low. [laughter and comments] So you admit you wouldn't be anything but a Baháʼí? It's too much fun.

[2:34:29] [Woman speaking] I wonder if we can close with a song?

[2:34:32] A song?

[2:34:33] [Woman continues] Yes. Well, before we have a prayer. You know, Greg is such a wonderful songwriter.

[2:34:38] Greg?

[2:34:40] [Woman speaking] He's written the most famous Baháʼí songs that I know from America and Europe.

[2:34:46] What? I didn't know you had these hidden charms, Greg?

[2:34:50] [Discussion followed by song].

[2:38:08] Who wrote that?

[2:38:10] [Woman speaking] Charles Wolcott I think.

[2:38:14] Charles didn't write that.

[2:38:17] [Some discussion].

[2:38:31]You know, there's something that is a... I don't know. When we were in Africa, sometimes not always, we found that some Baháʼí meetings were: here was the Methodist or whatever church it was and here was the Baháʼí meetings and you couldn't tell the difference. The only way I could tell the difference was by hearing every now and then the word Bahá’u’lláh. But otherwise, I'll be darned if I could see any difference between that revivalist leading over there and what was going on in the Baháʼí meeting here. And I don't know how we're going to protect ourselves from this because I really don't think that we're one more revivalist sect, you know. We have to be terribly terribly careful. I don't know. I remember when I was a child, of course it's a different background if you like. But although I was born a Baháʼí and brought up a Baháʼí, I had this fierce resentment of the regimentation and ceremonies of the church. Well I'd never belonged to any church, but typical of a certain group of my generation, I hated it, you see. And in New York we had... dear old [name?], who wrote a thing called the Benediction. Did you ever learn that? "May God's love now hover o'er us, As a dove with outstretched wings"

[2:40:09] If I could sing, I'd sing it. A very tiresome melody. And his piece that something or other, something or other. And in the Baháʼí center in New York, lo and behold, at the end of a Baháʼí meeting everybody had to stand up and sing the "Benediction". And of course, this roused all my wrath because I didn't want to be regimented like this at all because we don't have any regiment in the Baháʼí Faith. So we wrote to the Guardian, I forget whom, somebody. And he said that it was all right to do it occasionally but it mustn't become a habit, you see. And I think that perhaps this is the clue to not being like this revivalist meeting, because really, lots of places it's getting more and more like a revivalist meeting. You have the song and they sound like a revivalist meeting. If you listen the words are different but the whole bit is the same and revivalist. And we have to be terribly careful because we are not a revivalist sect. This is a different kind of a religion. It just hasn't got any of these things.

[2:41:24] Not that we shouldn't have Baháʼí songs, that isn't possible nowadays because everybody, everything is sung. This is the period in this century when everything is sung. You know, [singing: "Colgate is the best toothpaste." Laughter] And then along comes cigarettes and that's another tune and so on. And everything is sung and now the Baháʼí Faith is sung. But we have to be very, very careful.

[2:41:51] [Audience member] We'll sing the teaching book. [Laughter].

[2:41:53] No, no. We have to be really careful. It seems to me to not have exactly the same pattern as the revivalist church next door. I feel this very, very strongly. I can't see it. I mean why should we? I'm a Baháʼí because I don't want any of that. I don't believe in these things of the past. I'm glad that there's none of it in my religion, you see. Well don't start now re-imposing the whole thing on me which is typical of so many... it's really of revivalism. It's not even typical of the church. The Catholic Church still has a very dignified mass. But this sort of thing I think we have to be very, very careful not to introduce it into the Faith. And how you get the songs without getting too much of a revivalist atmosphere, I don't know. It's just exactly the sounds of our Baháʼí meetings, some of them.

[2:42:56] [Woman speaking] Yes like [singing].

[2:43:00] [Audience member] That's not revivalist.

[2:43:02] [Woman speaking] It's a Haitian revivalist.

[2:43:04] [Discussion about revivalism].

[2:43:15] Yes let me ask you something. You tell me where it came from. A chairman of a meeting gets up. After all, God knows I'm in enough meetings in my life. And he gets up and he faces the audience and he says, "Alláh-u-Abhá". And they'd all say, "Alláh-u-Abhá" the whole bunch of them together. What's the difference between saying "amen" and the whole congregation saying "amen"? You tell me! You tell me! It's exactly the same thing. When you say "Alláh-u-Abhá" instead of "amen".

[2:43:49] [Woman speaking] We say it at the beginning; they say it at the end.

[2:43:52] Alright! No, I really and sometimes they throw it in at the end for good measure, but I don't know where these things have come into the Baháʼí Faith because they didn't exist in any place that I ever was. And they certainly don't exist in the Holy Land. So where is this coming from?

[2:44:15] [Some laughter and chatter.]

[2:44:35] [Man speaking] I was thinking... it's what I was starting to say before, that the culture of Baháʼí communities at this point in history, I feel, are gonna be much more, they're going to reflect much more the society they're in and the society the believers came from then they're gonna reflect any kind of Baháʼí type of society. Children of the halfling[?] idea. And many of the Baháʼís of Haiti come from Protestant background of some sort or Catholic background and the songs strike me very much like the Protestant type of songs, thirty-nine verses, you know and you sing every one of them.

[2:45:21] You having been brought up as a Protestant.

[2:45:23] [Man continues] No I wasn't. I was brought up a conservative Jew. But let me tell you...

[2:45:26] Well, that's what I mean. Did you have this kind of song in your synagogue?

[2:45:31] [Man continues] No, but we did have... like at a particular point in a service, you know like the fifth prayer, and every Friday night was something. And this is the ritual... at some Baháʼí meetings, some communities every single week will sing song. That was kind of the joke there with Arnold would give a rousing chorus of page two, you see. [Laughter]. Page two, and it's like the third song from the end after the talk has been given. You know, it's very easy for people to fall into a ritual because that's what they've been used to.

[2:46:09] Yes but we don't have it in the Baháʼí religion. That's why I'm glad I'm a Baháʼí.

[2:46:11] [Man continues] No we don't. That's where it comes from. It comes from the past, you see. The past is better than the future, you know? Accept Bahá’u’lláh but [?] up again, because it's known.

[2:46:21] No, the only reason I say that is because all of you are Baháʼí pioneers and Baháʼí teachers and very good Baháʼís anyway so think about it and see if you can be sure that you don't get too much of that sort of thing and the meetings vary a little bit. I don't see why the Baháʼí shouldn't have songs. This is an age of song. It's more universal than it's been since Adam and Eve. So you can't ignore it and you can't prevent the people from having it. And the whole world is full of discotheques and radios going day and night and so on. So this is a swung and a sung age so we can't deny this to the Baháʼís if it means something to them. This is my feeling. It means nothing to me, frankly. Some very beautiful Baháʼí songs, well you see the pilgrimage, you will hear first a Tablet of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá chanted in Persian and then that song The Queen of Carmel sung in English by that beautiful Canadian, what's her name? Nancy Ward[?], from Montreal who's had operatic training. And it's exquisite, you see. Just perfect.

[2:47:35] So the songs in the film that I made, and very beautiful, beautiful songs and beautiful music and I think it adds tremendously to the thing. It's not a question of not having it. It's a question of trying to weave it in such a way that we don't get set forms because we're getting something now, it's beginning to be very much... we're gonna have it first this and then we're gonna have the that and then we're gonna have the Alláh-u-Abhá's, and then we're gonna have the prayers and the talks and then more singing or more Benediction or more something or other, you see. We could very it in such a way that the people understand that there's some mobility in Baháʼí meeting, that there isn't a form for Baháʼí meeting.

[2:48:20] [Man speaking] We used to have questions come up about the order of feast for example. If it were convenient someone would want to have the social part of the feast first. I always thought that that was one thing that was set, the devotional part first, the consultative portion and the social portion.

[2:48:43] Has that been changed?

[2:48:45] [Man speaking] Well some places yes.

[2:48:48] Not that I've ever heard. This is what the Guardian said.

[2:48:50] [Woman speaking] There are some communities who are doing that. In Quebec, in our community, we do only the social part first.

[2:48:57] Well I don't see how you get that. Remember when Shoghi Effendi said do the devotional part first and then the consultative and then the social.

[2:49:04] [Woman speaking] It was because of the children.

[2:49:07] Well frankly I'm tired of child worship. There's a new idol in the world today and it's children. I'm perfectly serious my friends. Lots of you are young mothers, so you don't get the point at all but maybe somebody in the room gets it. There is a thing in Western society, I don't know where it came from, whether it's come from two world wars and the threat of a third world war, whatever it is. There's always a tremendous thing for children after wars, everybody knows that, including a tremendous birthrate, and tremendous birthrate higher for boys and girls after wars. Alright, whatever it is, this is the age of the worship of the child. Children have been put on a pedestal in our society, which isn't too good of a place for them. They're part of society. But, good gracious, everybody that was ever born was once a baby and once a child and once a youth and once an adolescent and once an adult, and once middle-aged, and then once old and once dying. There's nothing new about it. So why this worship of children? They have a place but why should we reverse the order of our Baháʼí feasts to suit the children? [unintelligible reply] I'm sure my dear they didn't mean bad. But the point is that if there's a way of doing something, would you mind telling me why you reverse it because you think the other way's better and in the end you get the whole Baháʼí Faith reversed? [unintelligible reply.]

[2:50:40] [Man speaking] Just to add to that, in our assembly home, by having the prayers first we found the children's reading has greatly improved, their knowledge of English language has greatly improved, and their love of the prayers has greatly improved. And they left after the prayers and played during the consultation and then enjoyed the social part greatly.

[2:51:00] Well I think that's logical. That's all right. If the children will not disturb the devotional part, there's no reason why they shouldn't be there. And there's no reason why in small communities they should not take part in reading. It's very wonderful for them and good for the adults, good for the children. But I think that we get everything out of proportion in the world today. Every single thing has its place. It's best in its place than out of its place. But to this business of getting ritualistic atmosphere in the Baháʼí Faith, I don't like it at all.

[2:51:39] [Man speaking] Could I tell you a story about that that's quite amusing?

[2:51:40] Yes I hope it is amusing. [Laughter]

[2:51:46] [Man continues] Some have heard it already, but I would like you to hear. When Reed was in grade one, he was Baháʼí at that time, and the class was acting up and the teacher was flustered. And it was four o'clock I suppose and she has about had it. She said, "Class, don't be so, don't be so-," and she'd lost the word and Reed piped up in grade one, "Contumacious?" [Laughter]. And she said, "I beg your pardon? There's no such word." And he said, "There certainly is. I read it in the Baháʼí prayers, and it means disobedient." And she looked it up and there it was and it became the class word. [Laughter]. From then on: "class, don't be contumacious." And they already knew what it meant.

[2:52:28] Really, Baháʼí children. They're quite something.

[2:52:33] [Woman speaking] In Jacmel somebody came, you know, a non-Baháʼí to the meeting. And she was so impressed that, you know, from the little one to the older one when somebody say a prayer, everybody's quite. Everybody has [?] reverence, you know. And she said "It is so beautiful, your face is so beautiful because from the little one to the older one, everybody can say it and everybody has to respect", you know. And I think that was so beautiful. And she became a Baháʼí, you know. [Unintelligible comment].

[2:53:11] I think that this business of music... I remember a very precious memory of Africa. Violette and Ali and I went to the North in Uganda together. And he was on the National Assembly then. It was before the International Baháʼí Counsel was elected and he was elected to it and then of course to the House of Justice. So we went way up in the north somewhere or other. And we had a big meeting and it was one of those things that went on forever. We had a meeting under the big tree and we had the prayers and the speeches and the talks and the people came. And then in the evening, all the villagers came from quite near, there must have been over 200 people and the village had a sort of beaten earth place empty in the middle. So we had all the spiritual part, had the prayers, had the talks, we had the questions, we had the prayers closing, we had everything. So that night we had the fun. And you know they play the Congo, do you know what that is? They call it the African piano? Which is a marvelous instrument. [Audience replies in the affirmative]. They had seven of those. And they had big ones like that, and they had little ones like that. And of course they all had different sounds. You know, those seven or eight Baháʼís that were playing that, they could have played on Broadway. I have never heard anything like that. They were marvelous. They were a complete orchestra.

[2:54:39] [Audience member] Baha'i youth?

[2:54:40] Baháʼí youth. So we had these songs and then we began, Ali and I, to sing songs that we knew together to amuse them, like "Old MacDonald had a farm, E-i-e-i-o", and "[? lists another tune]" and so on. And with a woof woof here and a quack quack there and then the whole 200 were quack quacking and so on. [Laughter]. This orchestra was playing it on this instruments. Then we had dancing with drums and they got Ali dancing. Remember the National Assembly, the representative of Mr. Banání the Hand of the Cause and so on? And he was up dancing with everybody and clouds of dust. So when it was all over, God knows what hour, I asked the villagers, I said, "Tell me, did you have a good time?" And they said yes. I said, "Do you realize you had nothing to drink? That you can have a good time without drinking?" Because of course they drink like fish. And we had a marvelous evening and then to impress on them what a lovely time we all had, the whole time together, bang up party, but no liquor. In fact there wasn't anything to drink. Point was that that was it, you see? Impressed it on their minds. But I don't mean that we shouldn't have music. Of course we should have music, because it means a great deal to people. But we shouldn't have it in a ritualistic form that first, we're gonna have the music then we're gonna have 2 or 3 Baháʼí songs, so-called. And then we're gonna have this and we're gonna have that and so on. Well we can have it in different places or at the break. Or the entertainment tomorrow night is going to be a feast and I'm sure there'll be a lot of singing and joyousness and music on that occasion. I mean, it should, it must be there because it means, particularly people as musical as the black race, it must be there.

[2:56:45] [Woman speaking] You know Rúhíyyih Khánum I don't believe that the singing of that little book we have here is a joyous singing. I think it's more like memorization of songs, and they feel it's like in school, children sing in school because I've never seen a happy face singing those songs. They're all so serious going, "Oh those songs so serious!" I don't think...

[2:57:04] [Woman speaking] It's like a funeral.

[2:57:04] I don't you think when you're concentrating 200 children on singing a song, you've got to take it seriously?

[2:57:10] [Woman speaking] They are not [?] my children.

[2:57:12] Oh well I thought you meant the children are [?].

[2:57:14] [Woman speaking] No, no, no, that's alright, the adults.

[2:57:15] Well that I don't...

[2:57:18] [Woman speaking] But when they are happy is when they sing carnival songs. Then they're extreme joyous.

[2:57:22] Probably had more piff in the words. [Laughter]

[2:57:27] [Man speaking] Don't you know it.

[2:57:29] [Woman speaking] I think we should encourage our Haitian musicians, encourage them to write a little piffier songs or whatever, but I mean...

[2:57:37] But there's something I'd like to ask. You know, I don't know. What is this thing they've done? What's that that famous hymn? The most famous hymn, the one that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá loved so much. You know the title of it?

[2:57:50] [Woman speaking] Yes. Silent night?

[2:57:51] No, no, no, no, no that's not a hymn.

[2:57:55] [Woman speaking] You mean the Scottish one?

[2:57:56] No. The one he loved. It's one of the most famous Christian hymns. And he spoke about it...

[2:58:00] [Woman speaking] Oh yes, he spoke about it in one of the talks in New York.

[2:58:03] Yes! And he loved it. And he told the first group of pilgrims, including my mother was one of them. She had a beautiful voice. And a couple of the other pilgrims to sing it in the tomb of Bahá’u’lláh and they sang it in the tomb of Bahá’u’lláh when they went with Mrs. Hearst, the first group.

[2:58:20] [Man speaking] Not that "O Come, O Come Emmanuel"?

[2:58:22] No no no no no it's not that. I remember. Anyway.

[2:58:25] [Woman speaking] Howard Colby Ives talks about it in one of the...

[2:58:26] No, it's that famous one I can't remember. [phrase?]. Anyway, the point is not that. The point is... what's the point? [Laughter].

[2:58:40] [Woman speaking] You were going to ask...

[2:58:41] [Woman speaking] The seriousness of songs?

[2:58:43] Oh, they have taken that or something as equally famous hymn and they put Baháʼí so-called words to it. And I was in a Baháʼí meeting and all Baháʼís are singing God-knows-what nonsense to this glorious old hymn. I was singing the Christian hymn at the top of my lungs and they were singing something God-knows-what to the same tune.

[2:59:04] [Audience member] My eyes have seen the coming of the glory of the Lord.

[2:59:07] Maybe. I don't understand it! Why do the Bahá’ís do it?

[2:59:08] [Woman speaking] How does the music go?

[2:59:10] [Audience singing] 'Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.....

[2:59:17] [Chatter about the song]

[2:59:26] [Woman speaking] But you know Khanum, in Iran when you were talking about how to deepen and now coming to singing, in Zaire many, many years ago, early years during the period when the Eastern part of Zaire for almost five years was cut off from everywhere else when they had this terrible civil war. And had about 10,000 Baháʼís at that time who were caught in Zaire. Anyway, the people of Zaire all together are marvelous singers and musicians. This is the characteristic of the people. Now everything they learned, they were 90% illiterate. But whatever they were taught, if it's in the morning, you know, in the training course or whatever you told them about the life of the Báb, by night that whole story was put into music and they were singing it. And everybody would memorize. And this was the most marvelous way of deepening. So everything they wanted to teach became a song. There's not a song of the songs but the real hot pop songs of the discotheque because whatever came to their mind they immediately, whatever was popular music...

[3:00:50] They put the words.

[3:00:51] [Woman continues] The words were put into it. But as a result the history - I remember once I heard that they told the head about the martyrdom of the Báb. This is what Ali came back from [?] and told us. He said that the martyrdom of the Báb, that he told them in the morning, at night this was put into a song in Swahili that made him weep when he heard it. It was so touching and moving and it moved everybody when they heard about his martyrdom. I don't know whether in Haiti people are that musical, whether you can use music for deepening.

[3:01:29] You see to me, that I can understand. This is an absolutely natural, creative, spontaneous thing. I'm talking about regimentation. All the difference in the world between the two things, you see. And I think that that's wonderful. I'm all for the Baháʼís doing that. I think so-called Baháʼí songs are alright. But somebody had a guitar the other day, and I guess it was in the last country San Domingo. And I said, "Can't you play any classical music?" For God's sake there is such a thing as some other music than a Baháʼí doggerel that somebody's... I'm a Baháʼí, you're a Baháʼí. Why should you sing it all at me? 'God is one, man is one...'. I know that and you know that, why will you all subject me to that awful song again, you see? It's boring. Terribly boring. Why couldn't we sing one of the glorious old songs? In Montreal when I was a girl we had music too because we love music like anybody else, you see? But we used to sing, I don't know what, some of the Negro spirituals were sung, some glorious music was sung, not all these Baháʼí doggerels all the time. Is this the proof that I'm a Baháʼí? Can't I ever listen to a good old-fashioned song that we all know the words? A rousing thing that is thrilling for all of us? A Haitian something or other. Why does it always have to... That's why I say we sound like the Methodist, the Adventists.

[3:03:11] [Man speaking] Do you know the Haitians, seems to be a difference here. I haven't been here very long and probably shouldn't be talking about it except its first impressions. Everything that they do, wear, say, and I expect think, is imported. As well as half the things they eat.

[3:03:27] Except voodoo.

[3:03:29] [Man continues] Well, except voodoo. They're wearing digital watches and living in mud huts. I saw more digital watches in [city?] than I've seen in Canada.

[3:03:44] The mud hut is indigenous.

[3:03:46] [Man continues] No I know, but I'm trying to make a point.

[3:03:48] And the digital watch is a sign of prestige.

[3:03:50] [Man continues] Yes, of course it is. But there is a fundamental form of corruption here, I don't mean political necessarily. These people do not seem to have their own culture, I guess.

[3:04:05] Oh no, I think you're absolutely wrong there and I think that most of the people in their view will tell you you're wrong. They have their own culture that is famous. They are amongst the most artistic people in the world. I don't know, you name me a nation... come on here's an artist sitting next to me. Name me one nation that has as much artistic talent as people here.

[3:04:28] [Woman speaking] In expression?

[3:04:29] Yes. I've never come in contact with it. Well maybe in Kashmir these are pretty artistic as a group.

[3:04:37] [Man speaking] How about in India? India? Isn't that a very artistic country?

[3:04:38] No, depending entirely regionally. You can't take a country that size, you see, because every single state in India was once upon a time an independent nation.

[3:04:45] [Woman speaking] The Mexicans are artistic too.

[3:04:48] The Mexicans but not like here, not like here. [Inaudible audience comments]. I think that's a misapprehension.

[3:04:55] [Woman speaking] I have a question.

[3:04:57] Well you better hurry up and cough it up.

[3:05:00] [Woman continues] It's fast. You know that song that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá used to sing?

[3:05:03] The what?

[3:05:04] [Audience member] The martyr's song she means.

[3:05:05] [Woman continues] The martyr's song that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá used to sing.

[3:05:07] The what?

[3:05:08] [Audience member] The martyr's song. [Audience laughing and commenting].

[3:05:15] [Audience member] It's her French accent.

[3:05:19] [Audience member] The martyr's. When the martyrs were in Síyáh-Chál, going to be killed and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá was telling Juliet Thompson about it and He was singing the martyr's song and clapped his hands and stomped his feet.

[3:05:29] Where did you get that?

[3:05:31] [Woman continues] In the book!

[3:05:32] [Audience member] From "Bahá’u’lláh: The King of Glory."

[3:05:35] Let her tell you what it is.

[3:05:36] [Woman continues] The martyrs that went, you know, this is [Persian?]. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá said that they went [Persian?]. They did this and went to their martyrdom, which is the sign of the [?].

[3:05:31] Well that's what He said and [?] tell Juliet Thompson that this is the way they went to their martyrdom...

[3:05:31] No, they said He.... [End of audio].