Curious Reseacher - Blog #3

When writing a research paper, a lot of times, it is easy to think you can just jump into writing. We start to research a few topics that relate to your main topic and maybe find some interesting facts that will add to your research.  But while looking for information, you don't really have a specific problem you are trying to relate to. You are just looking at everything that is relatable.  A very important step in writing a research paper, as we are learning in "The Curious Researcher," is an inquiry question. When you have a question that you are trying to answer it is so much easier to search for the answers as opposed to just looking up a subject. There were three steps we were to follow for this next exercise in writing.

First we were asked to come up with an inquiry question: 

• What might explain the fact that Haiti was dedicated to Satan in the year of 1804 in a vodou ceremony and what were the effects of that dedication in the long run?

Secondly, based off of our inquiry question, we were to ask additional questions to further explore the topic and think of a thesis to go off of:

• What events were leading up to the island's dedication? Who were the people involved? What were the circumstances? How did this all come about? Where did this take place? Why was it dedicated to Satan and not God?
• My thesis: The Haitian slaves knew more about Satan at the time than they did God and they were fearful of vodou witch doctors. They wanted to Satan's approval so they promised Satan the island if he would help them win their revolt against the French.

The third and final thing we were asked to do was to state whether we had any personal or prior belief's that have made me feel the way I do about this subject.

• One thing that got me started on this topic is my love for Haiti in general. I was a missionary there for almost ten years. There is so much about Haiti that is very interesting especially its culture. The year we moved to Haiti was the end of the 200 years of dedication to Satan. I fully believe that the dedication was real and completely has shaped how Haiti has been for the last 200 years. Haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere and I believe that a lot of that has to do with the fact that it was "Satan's island."