I was on a rare family vacation in 1973 when I worked for the Caribbean Travel Association while my family lived abroad in the U.K. A friend arranged the flights for my wife and two daughters on a journey that started with a brief visit home in Miami before I flew us on to Haiti for a few days before hopscotching our way to Martinique, St. Lucia, Bequia, Barbados, Bonaire and Aruba.
I knew many Haitians including Theo Duval, the highly educated and complex but accessible tourism functionary under president Jean-Claude (Baby Doc) Duvalier, who shared my outlook on tourism and who would become Ambassador to France until Baby Doc was deposed after 15 years by uprising in 1986. The minister of tourism at the time, with whom I had already organized an annual general meeting of CTA in Port-au-Prince, arranged our car. I wanted our daughters, who were 14 and 12 at the time, to learn the paradox of Haiti that was the oldest republic in the region, having defeated Napoleon’s army in 1804, but that ever since had fallen into anarchy, kleptocracy, and appalling poverty. We set off for Cap-Haitien on the north coast, where independence was won.
There was also Carl Otto Schutt Au Cap who was local agent for Norwegian Caribbean Lines, with whom I had stayed in touch. As well, Carl Otto’s daughter Laetitia, who already had her atelier gallery in town (later in Port-au-Prince) and who had learned to paint in the flat-surfaced style exemplified by the patriarch Philomé of the Obin family, for whom I would bring paints on visits. His smock of paint wipings was probably the only abstract work of his that he otherwise never attempted. Laetitia’s younger
sister would become TiCorn (petite Cornelia), an international folk troubadour.
On the road north
Not for the first time I learned of Nancy’s own independence. The road was a narrow main “highway” potholed everywhere and free range for every dog and chicken that left me playing dodge ’em in hopes of reaching Cap before dark. Whereupon Nancy declares from the back seat, “Dad, if you hit one of those animals, I’m never going to speak to you again.”
I slowed. We reached.
Carl Otto thought I might be of some benefit to a nearby village in my capacity as director of tourism for the region. He arranged for a visit and overnight stay. That would have been worthwhile had he arranged for an interpreter. I did not think to ask. Carl Otto, whose family had arrived in the 1830’s/1840’s from the Palatinate, spoke perfect kreyòl and of course French, Haiti’s two official language. There were no English speakers in the village, and so we became voyeurs.
The family and I reached Labadie by skiff captained by the village headman, who ferried us over and back from town. When we arrived, we were ushered into his own bedroom that we were to occupy overnight. It was in a hut that Mary Lee remembers as made of sticks with a rush roof.
We found a long log well back of the beach where we sat and marveled how we had found ourselves there. Kids stood by tittering. We didn’t understand until it was explained that the log was used for the latrine maintained by the burial of droppings and sanded down after each use. We chose not to swim.
We made do with a pigeon language and the animation of hands and facial expressions. Somehow daughter Nancy, 14 at the time, was able to chat with the children. She was understandably cautious. Mary Lee recalls, though not disparagingly so. “We were on another planet. How intrusive we must have been!”
Our evening meal was cooked over an open fire by the beach, that Mary Lee remembers for the pan-fried whole fish that was fresh from its afternoon catch and seasoned by fresh herbs. High cuisine from uncertain expectations. We were serenaded by guitars. Words left unspoken were conveyed by our smiles and posturing
When it was time for sleep, we found the bed hard as rock. Nancy and Magda chose the floor. We lay awake, while beyond a curtain the headman’s wives belched, farted and coughed.
We otherwise stayed a night or two at one of the best small hotels of the region, the Mont St. Joli operated by Walkey (Walter) Bussenius and his mother that was still largely contained in their private home that would expand into its jewel in the rough as I last knew it.
Labadie becomes Labadee
In 1986, Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines pumped a reported US$50 million into Labadee, its preferred name for the beach that removes any stigma in this place of poverty that non-knowing passengers might otherwise mispronounce as Laba-die (rhymes with dye). It was a lifesaver for the village after the earthquake of 2010 that devastated the country. Royal Caribbean already employed 200 from the village and surrounding area in addition to vendors and hair braiders. Labadee had already become the most visited place in the entire country. Now it became a lifesaver.
According to its press office, Royal Caribbean Cruises had become one of Haiti’s largest foreign investors for almost 30 years when it announced plans to provide at least $1 million in humanitarian relief to Haiti in response to the earthquake. It did not switch ports from Labadee to elsewhere in the region.
“The effect of the earthquake on Haiti has been catastrophic, leaving the country in need of not only immediate support, but assistance in their long-term recovery,” said Richard D. Fain, chairman and chief executive officer, Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. “Royal Caribbean wants to do its part to help out not only the general response, but also our hundreds of Haitian employees and their families through this disaster.”
Leslie Voltaire, Special Envoy of the government of Haiti to the United Nations welcomed “the continuation of the positive economic benefits that the cruise ship calls to Labadee contribute to our country.”
Royal Caribbean International’s Independence of the Seas’ next call to Labadee brought rice, dried beans, powdered milk, water and canned goods from its call in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Fain said that the company’s entire net revenue from the destination would be contributed to the relief effort.
Additionally, RCCL invested US$300,000 with the DC-based Pan American Foundation that, according to PADF, has provided 1,200 families with an upgraded water reservoir, a refurbished clean water kiosk, community showers, a “state of the art school,” and a new water catchment system. More than 8,000 trees were planted to protect the watershed.
For a brief time in a singular place with no tour buses, no overcrowding of where people lived — a place “not of this planet” — a benefit of mass tourism hove into view.
As one villager told NBC News, “If the ship doesn’t come, we die.”
Three particular memories
The rest of the family trip stands out again for Nancy’s independence when, on the climb to La Citadelle, where the fortress rained carnage upon the French army, Nancy refused to ride one of the emaciated donkeys that eased the difficult climb for visitors. We others rode, though Mag had embraced a pony in the Schutt residential compound when we visited.
In Barbados, I saw the girls frolic in the surf again as children, and In Aruba, in one of the rarest moments of my life, I asked Mary Lee to dance. I was wild with abandon. I loved traveling with my family, We all learned from each other. As Mary Lee and I sat back down at our table, the woman alongside blurted out, “You sure are some dancing fool.”
