When American troops arrived in the Persian Gulf four years ago, religious differences were an obvious factor in the culture shock they would experience thousands of miles from home.
This time, U.S. troops have landed much closer to home.Haiti, about 600 miles southeast of Miami, is no farther than Washington, D.C., from some Southern states.
Nonetheless, it is foreign soil. And just as Americans were bemused in the Middle East by Islamic customs, conservative dress code and rhetoric using the Islamic term "jihad" to mean "holy war" both as outward combat and an internal struggle, Haitian cultural and religious habits will again make Americans strangers in a strange land.
At the top of the list is the widespread knowledge and practice of voodoo alongside the predominant Roman Catholicism, says Leslie Desmangles, a professor of international studies and religion at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn.
Also high on the list is Haitians' casual attitude toward nudity, said Desmangles, who was born and raised in Haiti and has returned often to research its religious life. Men and women there sometimes bathe outdoors partially or fully naked, he says.
Voodoo's prominence in Haitian folk culture, coupled with Americans' misconceptions about it - whether they poke fun at or fear notions such as zombies risen from the dead or voodoo dolls poked with pins to inflict pain on enemies - make voodoo a potential area for misunderstanding and problems, Desmangles says.
That surfaced even before the on-again off-again invasion.
Emile Jonassaint, who was installed as provisional president by the Haitian military, enlisted a voodoo spirit against a U.S. invasion. Paramilitary leader Emanuel Constant vowed that his Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti would fight invaders with an arsenal including guns, poison darts and voodoo powers.
The rhetoric was reminiscent of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's vow to defeat the United States in the Persian Gulf War, which he called the "mother of all battles."
And just as Hussein bent the meaning of "jihad" to accommodate his view of holy war, Jonassaint and Constant have manipulated voodoo to suit their purposes, Desmangles said.
Incidentally, he insists that while he has seen dolls symbolizing spirits in voodoo temples during his 25 years of research, he has never seen a voodoo doll-effigy poked with pins, let alone seen a zombie.
Both are largely figments of American novels and movies, he says.
He deliberately spells voodoo "vodou" as the Haitians do, he says, because "when most people see `voodoo,' they have a negative image, as in George Bush's infamous reference to `voodoo economics.' "
"There are hundreds of spirits in vodou, arranged into five families. The same spirit has different faces in different families. For example, the spirit Ogun symbolizes death in the African-derived Rada family, while Ogun-Badagri is the clown in the Haitian-Creole Petro family."
An old saying reconciles the two, he notes, "holding that since you cannot escape death, the best you can do is laugh at it."
While zombies and pins in voodoo dolls are misperceptions of voodoo, he says true practices include animal sacrifices - ranging from chickens to pigs to bulls - in public ceremonies that can be bloody. And, he adds, American troops may well encounter them if they walk the streets.
Admitting to some exaggeration on both counts, Desmangles describes the commingling of two religious traditions by saying, "Haiti is 100 percent Catholic and 90 percent vodou."