Wade Davis on Haitian zombies

This week, I listened to a short interview of having Dr. Wade Davis talk about his new book “The Serpent and the Rainbow on CBC radio with Peter Gzowski. The interesting story is about how modern medicine and cultural belief relate to the creation of Haitian “zombies”.

Reflection from the transcribing activity, I feel that it was difficult to be focused on transcribing the questions only during my first few attempts. My attention was easily taken away by the interview content. During this interview, the setting seems to be quite informal although it was broadcasted on national radio channel. The interview was not conducted with a well structured framework; instead, it was more like having a daily conversation between two individuals. The interviewer, Peter Gzowski did not rely heavily on questions with open or close ended questions. In fact, he asked the interviewee, Dr. Davis to describe information with statements. For example, he used “Given me an example of…..”. By using this type of interview style, I think it actually encourages the interviewee to share and provide more information with less possibilities to be influenced or misled by the interview questions. This tactic actually helps to keep the information collected through the interview be more neutral. Another observation is that as a non-English native speaker, it was a little bit challenging for me to transcribe certain content without some sort of the context of the given topic, especially if the topic involves scientific terminologies. Therefore, as a researcher, it is imperative to have a profound understanding about the subjects to be studied which in return will be helpful with the data analysis process.

Below, please find the list of questions asked by the interviewer:

Tell we what you are set out to do. Is this  essentially an academic exercise or an exercise of adventure  writing?

But as, I am thinking when you came back  to start sorting  through your material, I mean,  the book is a  symbol so much, it  began so much like an old thrilling adventuring yard, you must have been aware of that as you are writing it?

Now a professor set beautiful daughters and all those things happened to you have a kind of just set out I mean starts like a movie

What is the academic community generally think of what, cause there was some evidence, there were  some stories that  peak their interests and you got asked to go down there, outline where they thought were going

Give me the Nase’s case, you became so..in a nutshell

This guy has been dead? And it has all the symptoms that they knew he turned blue and..all stuff about it and in 1980, here came up the guy.

So they got all away, the F know but  and they said: “you go down there to see if there are drugs could do this”, right?

Tell me now how did you go as you have not been to Haiti  before, you, you have done lots of travelling, you kicked around the world a lot including the juggles of South America. Just take me to Haiti with you, you get off quickly to see things going on

I want you to tell a little bit about the drug, I mean, your scholarship really shows up the buckets you go through, you have obviously read all the literature on the old drugs and it is fascinating, it seems  that it’s half romances and half science as you are talking about, if you are,  I am really over simplifying it and you can straight me out pharmacologically. But here you go,  you boiled a toad, you get what you get, it’s not what your boiled tow but there are secretion, certain kind of toad  that are poisons. You are talking about blow fish which I mean you don’t eat the blow fish, a puffer fish which hurts your tongue tongue but it turns out that it knocks you down, the chemistry is solid here,

En hmm, Is it three husband and fifty thousand times more powerful as cocaine?

Ay, I knew there was a giant figure there, yeah, no jokes about that

You said that, as you talked about this morning, also evident in the book,  there were certain community assumptions that are a part of. Now that really  that really boils down that if you don’t believe this, it does not work, right?

Would you be a little bit hypothetical that you did not witness this but you put together all the evidence you, tell me what could happen in a village where he gets out of line and somebody is going to zombie him, someone is going to give him the powder

To what extent do you buy the hypothesis the existence of secret society, or the sets of secret societies with access to this information with the threat of turning someone into zombie if you go against with their doing in their community, cause this is,  the book is very much about Haiti, the history of Haiti, the darkness of that society, do you buy the existence of this society?

What about bring the people back? What about coming back from the Zombie?

Is there any quick, easy, handy lesson for modern medicine out of  your discovery cause you have confirmed something and talked about