Caris­sa Nanan-Jaikaran

The use of the “home name” has been a nor­mal part of every­day life for Trin­bag­o­ni­ans for decades. Most of us are prob­a­bly more close­ly as­so­ci­at­ed with our home names, of­ten link­ing our “gov­ern­ment name” to se­ri­ous sit­u­a­tions or “get­ting in trou­ble”. But did you know that the home name was steeped in West African prac­tice and be­lief? Our African an­ces­tors be­lieved that a per­son’s true name holds deep spir­i­tu­al pow­er and con­nects di­rect­ly to their soul, so a “fake iden­ti­ty” was a way to pro­tect chil­dren from the evil eye, neg­a­tiv­i­ty, jumbies and for­est spir­its.

One such en­ti­ty is the Douen. They were be­lieved to be chil­dren un­der twelve who died be­fore be­ing bap­tised or named, doomed to roam the earth for the rest of their af­ter­life. They are de­pict­ed as small, face­less, child­like be­ings wear­ing large, mush­room-shaped straw hats, with their feet turned en­tire­ly back­wards to mask their tracks.

The Douen is one of Trinidad’s most com­pelling ex­am­ples of syn­cretism. Its name is de­rived from the Span­ish duende, mean­ing gob­lin or spir­it. Its folk­lore re­flects a con­ver­gence of cul­tur­al be­liefs: West African spir­i­tu­al tra­di­tions, in which chil­dren who die be­fore nam­ing cer­e­monies or reach­ing cer­tain ages may be un­der­stood as ex­ist­ing be­tween the hu­man and an­ces­tral realms, and In­dige­nous be­liefs as­so­ci­at­ed with its dis­tinc­tive back­wards-fac­ing feet. Mean­while, the be­lief that Douens are the souls of un­bap­tized chil­dren is a di­rect prod­uct of French and Span­ish Ro­man Catholic in­flu­ence, which shaped how these spir­its came to be un­der­stood in Trinida­di­an folk­lore.

Be­cause the Douen is con­demned to wan­der the earth, it is said to seek out liv­ing chil­dren, lur­ing them in­to the for­est or high woods. El­ders tra­di­tion­al­ly warn that you should nev­er call a child by their re­al name aloud, par­tic­u­lar­ly around dusk or near wood­ed ar­eas. Ac­cord­ing to folk­lore, if a Douen over­hears a child’s name, it can mem­o­rise it and use a fa­mil­iar, mim­ic­k­ing voice to call the child in­to the trees. Should the child an­swer or fol­low the voice, they risk be­com­ing lost in the woods… nev­er to re­turn.

‘We thought they were chil­dren’

(Not the writer's sto­ry)

“I was around nine years old, and my cousin was around eight, and we grew up in Long­denville. At the time, it wasn’t very de­vel­oped and was ba­si­cal­ly a hunter’s play­ground; still, it wasn’t short on mys­te­ri­ous things hap­pen­ing there. So it was a typ­i­cal Sat­ur­day, at mid­day, and my cousin and I de­cid­ed to go pick dol­phin wheels from the sand­box tree to make a neck­lace, so we de­cid­ed to go look for them be­hind our grand­par­ents’ house.

Now, be­hind their home was some­what of a for­est, with a riv­er run­ning through it and a cane field to the oth­er end. Next to the riv­er there were two ground springs.

Af­ter we col­lect­ed our dol­phin wheels, we de­cid­ed to take a splash in the springs. When we ar­rived at the spring, there were four of what seemed to be “chil­dren bathing in the riv­er near the spring; they wore no clothes; how­ev­er, they were wear­ing big hats, which we thought to be re­al­ly weird. They didn’t call us by name, but they asked us to join them, and we agreed. As we got in the wa­ter, we no­ticed that they seemed a lot fur­ther in the wa­ter than when we last saw them. We were small, so it didn’t raise an alarm for us, so we kept go­ing deep­er in­to the wa­ter, try­ing to catch up to play with them.

As we fol­lowed them up the riv­er, I no­ticed we had reached deep in­to the for­est (re­mem­ber the riv­er flowed through the for­est, back of the home and cane field). I stopped, and I urged my cousin to stop too, and as we did, the “chil­dren” al­so stopped and looked at us. The hair on my neck stood up, and I felt un­easy. Right be­fore our eyes, their faces be­gan to change, and they looked like short, hairy-look­ing men and plas­tered on their faces was a broad, sin­is­ter-look­ing grin. I told my cousin, “BOY, RUN”, and we bolt­ed in the oth­er di­rec­tion; how­ev­er, they be­gan to chase us. I was run­ning for my life; I couldn’t even feel my feet hit­ting the ground. We ran non­stop un­til we reached our grand­par­ents’ home.”

Caris­sa Nanan-Jaikaran is a folk­lorist, sto­ry­teller and cre­ator of Caris­sa Is­land Mys­ter­ies.

Her work is ded­i­cat­ed to ex­plor­ing, doc­u­ment­ing and pre­serv­ing the folk­lore, leg­ends, su­per­sti­tions and su­per­nat­ur­al sto­ries of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Out­side of folk­lore, she has a back­ground in Psy­chol­o­gy, men­tal health, com­mu­ni­ty work and ad­vo­ca­cy. She is cur­rent­ly an MSc stu­dent in Coun­selling Psy­chol­o­gy and works as an EAP As­so­ciate.

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