Grapes provide the wine for religions that originated near the Mediterranean Basin, but it's rum that fills some sacramental vessels in the New World. And it’s a worthy beverage.

I've always associated rum with the Caribbean, especially Haiti, where I had my first taste of Caribbean rum with friends whose lives are now transformed forever. My friends and their country enchanted me for decades; both are particularly in my thoughts now after the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake. I spent many wonderful days on the southern coast in the village of Jacmel, which was heavily damaged and is now filling with refugees.

Unlike the capital Port-au-Prince, Jacmel, just 25 miles to the northeast, presented a glimpse of the Caribbean’s past. A tiny square that was ringed by shops and pensions -- all flattened, now, I fear -- housed the central market. In that city of 40,000, everyone seemed to know their neighbors. The smell of roasting coffee pervaded the air, reminding everyone of the crop that was once the base of the region's economy.

Jacmel in the 1970s was a town where the 19th century seemed closer than the 21st. Days folded onto one another, each marked only by excursions to the beach, to the market, or to visit the late Selden Rodman, a Haitian art collector and folk art expert. On my trips, I would stay at a small hotel run by ex-patriates that sat on a black sand beach outside town. In the U.S., it would have been a satisfactory motel, but the wonderful local art, good Creole food, and warmth of the owners made it a haven.

One evening, the hotel’s owner suggested that a small group of us head into town to attend a not-for-tourists ceremony run by one of the housekeepers, who by night became one of the area's most respected mambos, or priestesses of Vodun the term preferred over "voodoo"). We walked through the dark sandy streets that were illuminated only by flickering oil lamps and the occasional brightness of electricity that shot forth from an open doorway, until we arrived at a small outbuilding with an open-air room. The others anxiously looked for seats at the front of the room. I, however, directed my friend to the periphery. I knew what these ceremonies could bring -- visitors from another realm of consciousness -- and I didn’t want to meet up with the trickster, Guede; the Master of the Crossroads, or any of his minions on that velvet evening in Jacmel.

Many of the celebrants had familiar faces: the hotel's gardeners and chambermaids, cooks and waiters were transformed by the night into votaries of the ritual. The ceremony began with the drawing of a veve, or design with cornmeal on the dirt floor to indicate the loa(the Vodun spirits) being honored in the ceremony. The cornmeal flowed smoothly from the hands of the houngan, or priest, and I tried to decipher the shapes. Next came the spraying of the four cardinal points with raw cane-scented white rum known as clairin. As the ceremony progressed into the pre-dawn hours, the unmoving air in the small room became a miasma of sharp sweet scent of tobacco smoke, the acrid funk of human musk, and the intoxicating pungency of the clairin. We all became entranced in the ceremony and the magic of the moment.

The following day, when my head cleared from the drumbeats and the excitement, I sipped my last poolside rum punch and mused that whether sprayed to the cardinal points, savored in a snifter or mixed in my punch, the history of the region from Columbus to slavery, piracy to the present, is all present in a sip of rum. That was more than 30 years ago. Now the devastation of 2010 will be rolled into each sip in my mind as well.

In recent weeks, I found myself communing with others who love Haiti Chéri, a magical island. I’ve heard good news of survival as well as horrific tales of loss. I rejoiced as my friend Michèle Voltaire Marcelin announced that she had spoken with her 89-year-old mother for the first time since the quake. I am humbled by Michele's report  that, “…huddled like bees in a hive, Haitians were sharing what they had with each other; the rough and the sweet skin of things, space if they had it, or food, or water and definitely the prayer that the country would survive even if they did not.”

Watching and reading the news, I feel as helpless as I had when 9/11 transformed my birthplace, New York, and when Hurricane Katrina destroyed my adopted home, New Orleans. I am at a loss. Haunted by images of the present, I seek comfort in these memories of Jacmel.

At home, I found a bottle of Rhum Barbancourt. I poured some on the ground to honor the souls of all of those who perished, raised a glass to the indomitable strength of those who survived, and said a heartfelt prayer for the survival and rebirth of the country that I love.

Jessica B. Harrisis the author of 10 critically acclaimed cookbooks documenting the foods and foodways of the African Diaspora.

Photo: Children eat at a food distribution point in Jacmel, Haiti. Credit: Fred Dufour/AFP

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