Cà mà cąva ( Cajun French for “How’s it going?”)
My challenge entry consists of many things I’ve already spoken about here in this platform, but I’m going to tell yall again, in case yall forgot or just like to hear me ramble. 
Down here, in the bayou lands, or Cajun country, we have traiteaurs (pronounced as treaters)
They are the community healers.
I’ve been treated before for a really bad sunburn.
So the way it goes is an older male has to mentor (just show and tell 1 time) a younger female how to treat for certain things.
A older woman must mentor a younger male.
A male can not mentor another male, and same for females. However, only females can treat females, and males treat males.
The experience is nothing like what you’d think.
They just whisper prayers over you in Cajun French (depending on what the issue is, like maybe a sunburn for instance)
And then that’s it!
You can never tell them thank you, cuz then they’d have to do it all over again!
They do not discriminate, and they hardly ever turn anyone away, no matter what! It could be 4 am, and if you got a bad toothache, go call up the treater and get treated right away! Like that!
Now I know they say women can’t treat men, but I did a treatment on my husband the other day, last week. I can’t tell yall the prayer, but what I did was take a dry clean kitchen or hand towel, fold it up into a little square, and then got a glass 3/4 full of bottled water, like poured the water into the glass, and put the towel on his head like that, and flipped the glass upside down on his head.
The bubbles that come up through the water, that’s the ailment. That’s the sickness or the migraine. It works! It’s not just a Cajun/creole thing. It is widely known across southern Louisiana as a migraine treatment, so you may even see it be used by hoodoo or voodoo practitioners. It is NOT a closed treatment.
Along with stuff like that, we have our little old wives tales that we actually do take seriously.
If someone sweeps your foot, you gotta spit on the brooms bristles or face the jinx of getting picked up by the cops
If someone you don’t like comes over, when they leave, throw some salt on the sidewalk where they just walked and sweep it out and away towards them with the intentions of them never coming back around.
If you find a poisonous snake, you gotta handle it and then bury it by your front door to prevent other snakes from coming around and used as a protection ward.. kind of like the old mid evil days when they’d put people’s decapitated heads on sticks to let them know.
We don’t whistle at night.
Close all the blinds and windows by sunset.
Never answer a door that you hear a knock from unless you look out the window first to make sure it’s an actual person who’s knocking.
Don’t go into the woods at night or early morning alone.
Don’t answer to a call you don’t know, like if someone’s calling your name and it sounds like your mom or husband or something, don’t go answering back to it, unless you see that person because sometimes it’s a mimic.
Put 13 Pennie’s on your back steps and front steps to stall the rougarou from coming in your house.
Paint your porch ceiling or house “haint blue” to deter or trick haints from being attracted to your house. (A haint is a wandering spirit with bad intentions)
Lawd, I could go on and on and on.. but I think I may run out of paragraph space. 
I do understand that not everyone can experience the haunting chill the Louisiana fog brings when it rolls in, and that’s ok. It’s a pretty… unnerving feeling. So I’ll just explain it like this; Louisiana is rich in history, but the history itself is not rich. It’s barbaric in my own opinion, as well as unsettling with how much haunted history it has.
Also, speaking of traditions- I know there’s so many people in the world who think plantations are gorgeous places and sometimes they can be. But even the most gorgeous places are the ones whom has absorbed the most cruelest things. Please, for the love of everything good, please never ever ever ever get married at a plantation. Down here, we see it as disrespectful. Very very disrespectful. We understand it’s for aesthetics, but we also understand that the divorce is pretty much finalized before you even say “I do”. It’s really just bad juju. And also, very disrespectful. Disrespectful in the sense of ya know, many people were dehumanized on those grounds. Many people lost lives on those grounds, especially from cypress and oak trees. Very disheartening stuff. It’s just a bad idea all the way around, and that’s all I gotta say about that!
