The presentation of the Haitian component of the research entitled “Les enseignantes en gestion alternative de la fertilité : santé des femmes, contraception et religion au Québec et en Haïti” aims to highlight the preliminary results obtained from the analysis of data collected in 2024 from multi-hatted peasant women living in materially deprived communities with low levels of pharmaceuticals.

 

Analysis of data from individual interviews and a local dialogue workshop reveals that the people surveyed know how to manage their sexual, reproductive and physical health, despite their illiteracy and the lack of government support available to them. The diversity of representations associated with the management of pre-conception, menstruation, the pregnant body, childbirth, the post-partum period, and the body after a spontaneous or induced abortion is put to good use. This is rooted in a multi-dimensional way of thinking - religious, technical, magical, medical, symbolic - which perfectly reflects the relational nature of life, as well as the complexity of the constant management of female fertility in rural environments where the high number of children is a social norm, and where the woman is generally held responsible for the couple's infertility. Rural women's health management is part of an ecocentric (based on the almost exclusive exploitation of nature's resources) and cosmocentric medicine, with spiritual, material, magical and symbolic dimensions. However, it should be noted that much of the knowledge mobilized by the women we met is underpinned by a logic of epistemic cross-fertilization. In other words, this knowledge is not “closed” but “open” and “hybridized”. The transmission of this knowledge takes place during the lifetime of the person who possesses it, but at the request of one or more interested parties, and posthumously (after the death of the person who possesses the knowledge, but during a nocturnal dream).

 

Obrillant Damus is currently visiting professor at Laval University (Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies), with the support of “Science en Exil”, a program of the Fonds de recherche du Québec. He is a full professor at the Université d'État d'Haïti. His research interests include disability, solidarity, education for love, human vulnerability, peace education, home childbirth, local and indigenous knowledge, the rape of women, breastfeeding, regenerative and restorative pedagogies, educational foresight, education for global consciousness, and education for global citizenship. He is the author of numerous works in French, English, Haitian Creole and Spanish, some of which have been published by UNESCO. He has been a visiting professor and lecturer in many countries.

Trained in language sciences, educational sciences and socio-anthropology (doctorate), Obrillant Damus defines himself as a peasant-researcher whose work is strongly rooted in interdisciplinarity. His peasant origins and frequent stays in the West have enabled him to produce original work. He edits the journal Anthropologie des savoirs des Suds, published by Éditions de l'Université de Sherbrooke (ÉDUS).