By The Campfire

June 11, 2008

To the left, there is a scribble of sand so thin a hurricane could scrape it like a waiter wiping crumbs off the white linens of a cruise ship dinner table. It is one of the Turks and Caicos Islands. By morning, Haiti is off the portside. And it is no scribble of land.

We are not docking in Port-au-Prince, where the horror stories revolve around kidnappings and terror and starvation and murdering lawlessness. We are parked in the lovely, inlet harbor of Labadee, Haiti. This is a whole different Haiti – almost like Tahiti. I can see Gauguin painting such a place. I have heard these dialects before – in Louisiana. Creole sounds are not easily forgotten.

Columbus discovered Hispaniola on December 5, 1492, thinking he’d found something else. What he had discovered was a ruggedly mountainous island built to withstand hurricanes and the ravages of the seas with peaks pushing above 9,000 feet. It is the people who have a difficult time in this lush, tropical attachment on the west side of the Dominican Republic.

Napoleon fought over this island. Papa Doc and Baby Doc Duvalier had their way with the place as well. By the time Aristide and the Raboteau Massacre in 1994, things were looking difficult, to say the least. I don’t even know who is in charge now, but I do know we are sitting in a beautiful little cruise ship port in Labadee.

Royal Caribbean does an astounding job is every way. Their ships are luxurious jewels on the ocean. If you want to be completely blown away by the accommodations and service on a cruise, book it with Royal Caribbean. Totally a class organization built around customer service.

What they have tried to do in Haiti is admirable. Considering it is Haiti, what they have done may be miraculous. You don’t see the starving people eating dirt like on the news. Royal Caribbean is providing jobs, creating incomes and quite possibly, a small escape route from the rest of the island where gravity seems to pull the people down harder than most places. At least that's how it looks from the sandy beach.

We get a little glimpse of the business end of Haiti as we pass the security gate and move quickly up the mountain on a narrow road where we will ride the longest zip-line in the world over water (2,600 feet down the mountain and over a portion of the crashing, aqua surf) to the safety of the protected cove below.

Our vehicle passes men in uniform with weapons. They hardly look as happy as the vacationers gulping the “Labedoozies” down on the beach. These gentlemen are on the clock. We find out just how serious they are when an old truck rolls up to our Land Rover and gets a little too close. The back of the truck is filled with people, gleaming and desperate in the heat. The men with guns lean towards them and one man walks hurriedly in their direction. There are a lot of stern faces, loaded guns and skittish tourists.

The people in the truck look at us like wealthy aliens from another planet. Maybe because the poverty on this island is near total, the heat is past relentless, and the future is a word with not understandable definition. The humidity is liquid and polishes skin into an ebony glow. I see no smiles on that truck. It is tense for a few moments. But we pass, and soon we zip down the line and have tendered back into the ship and are gone, gliding in the waves, looking up at the immense mountains of this most substantial land where people have perfected the sad art of starvation and hopelessness.

In the afternoon, our ship cuts the Caribbean next to Haiti’s north shore, easing beside the massive island. We see villages on the coast with church steeples and smoking fires and trash floating in the water, even this far from shore. I look down into the inky water as the sun drops into the ocean ahead. What looks like a syringe floats by, followed by plastic bottles and other bits of debris.

Then I see a piece of paper, caught in the massive wake and foam of the ship. I can’t read the writing but it looks like a missing persons bulletin. The face looks up at me, undulating in the water below, still lost. This is how I will remember Haiti – like the face of a floating stranger, caught between luxury and poverty.

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