by Geoffrey Wisner

Early in December I spent ten days in Haiti, on a "Reality Tour" sponsored by Global Exchange, an organization in San Francisco that promotes fair trade and lending practices with developing countries. I went to Haiti because I had read books like Zora Neale Hurston's Tell My Horse and Herbert Gold's Best Nightmare on Earth, and I was fascinated by what I had learned about Haiti's turbulent history and politics, and about the voodoo religion and its African roots. But once there I was almost startled to realize that I was on a Caribbean island full of unexpected beauty.

I prepared for this trip as I would any other trip to the Third World: with a well-stocked first-aid kit, a flashlight, water bottle, a shot of gamma globulin, and modest expectations about hotels and restaurants. Yet throughout the trip I was better fed and more comfortable than I ever imagined I would be. In Pétionville, just outside Port-au-Prince, my group stayed at the Ifé Hotel, where we had French-style breakfasts of crusty bread with grapefruit jam, granadilla juice, and coffee. In the room where we ate hung a full-length portrait of a dark, watchful man in court uniform: an ancestor of Mme. Castera, the proprietor, who had served as a Haitian ambassador in Europe.

At the Cyvadier Beach Hotel outside Cap-Haïtien, the German-speaking owner had seen so few tourists lately that his first question was whether we were a group of priests. His hotel had an ideal setting, on a bluff overlooking a rock-encircled private cove, where I swam out and let the waves wash me back in. The nearby resort at Labadee was even more postcard-perfect, with lounge chairs and thatched canopies beside shell-strewn beaches of white sand. The place was deserted, but we were told that on certain days of the week cruise ships disgorged hundreds of passengers here. The tourists weren't told they were in Haiti but that they were on "Labadee Island."

Some of the places we visited looked inviting and well-kept, but must have been barely hanging on. At La Jacmelienne, said to be the best hotel in the southern town of Jacmel, only two entrées on the dinner menu were actually available--veal cutlets (which, in deference to the animal-rights supporters in the group, no one ordered) and grilled chicken--but the chef agreed to make omelets, which turned out fluffy and delicious. The waitresses wore white kerchiefs and white dresses whose square necklines gave the dignity of portrait busts to their shoulders, necks, and faces.

Roads ranged from poor to terrible, even the main routes from the capital to the north and south. The road to Cap-Haïtien, our guide Max told us, had not been paved since the presidency of Magloire, in the '50s. If only the roads could be repaired, Max speculated, tourists might return to Haiti, and a good road to the border might bring a spillover of tourists from the Dominican Republic.

Still, poor roads are not the only thing keeping tourists away. Two years after the return of President Aristide, the police force is slowly reorganizing, and banditry is not uncommon in the countryside. On the road one day we even witnessed a crowd surrounding a captured bandit who was bleeding from a head wound, and the body of another bandit whom the local people had killed. I learned later that four bandits in all had been killed, after attempting to hijack a convoy of trucks. The crowd seemed agitated but not out of control, and although we were a conspicuous group of witnesses I didn't feel that we were in danger ourselves. It was a stark illustration of how Haitians have been driven to protect themselves after generations without a functioning justice system.

Events like these, yanked out of their historical and political context, contribute to the primitive image of Haiti in some Americans' minds. Fortunately, the Haitians themselves show no sign of being aware that they are viewed this way. Even the very poor in this extremely poor country have spirit and hope, and carry themselves with pride. A well-spoken and outgoing Haitian artist whom I met in Pétionville led me to the home he shared with his wife and little girl: a cramped shack in a settlement that clung to a hillside on the edge of town. His English was excellent--he had worked as a driver for the US Marines--and he said he wanted to visit the US but was worried about his safety. Wasn't it true, as he'd learned from American movies, that everyone carried handguns? When he got to the States, he said, he planned to spend his time among white people because the same movies had convinced him that American blacks spoke a strange language that he wouldn't understand.

Cap-Haïtien, the historic town on the north coast, was my favorite place in Haiti, and if relative peace continues I would like to return there for a week or so. My group stayed at the Mont-Joli, a hilltop hotel with a swimming pool, but next time I would stay at Les Jardins de l'Ocean, where we went for dinner one night. A brisk Frenchwoman with stylishly bristly hair has remodeled an old house with wrought-iron balconies, across from the post office. You can stay in one of the four high-ceilinged guest rooms--decorated with paintings, sculptures, masks, and wall hangings--for only thirty dollars a night, and you can get shrimp pizza and French wine in a dining room with a marine mural.

The streets of Cap-Haïtien have lost their colorful old names--Street of Monkeys and Street of the Three Virgins--in favor of a functional grid system of letters and numbers, but they still offer absorbing sights at every turn: a man planing a coffin made of pinkish wood or a tethered turkey on a street corner, looking very much out of place. A message painted on the wall outside the cemetery prohibits "working" there without the permission of the "barons"--a warning against unauthorized voodoo rituals. From Cap-Haïtien it's a short drive to the town of Milot, where small but sturdy ponies carried us up a spiraling path to the sheer walls of the Citadelle, the mountaintop fortress built in the early 1800s to guard Haiti's independence. Cannonballs and mortar shells are still stacked on the grounds, and the old brass and iron cannons are being remounted on the parapets. One evening, back in the city, a few of us went to the Feu Vert restaurant near the waterfront to hear the merengue music of the popular band Septentrional, and the "roots" music of the newer group Boukan Ginen.

Haiti is not for everybody, but its uniqueness and its blend of pleasures and risks has always been irresistible to some. Even after years of repression, exploitation, and conflict, it has much to offer, and with a little more peace and breathing room it will amaze the visitors who take a chance on it.

This article first appeared in the Harvard Post (Harvard, Massachusetts) on March 14, 1997.