By Jean Hervé Charles
"Tourism is for the Caribbean what oil is for the Middle East."
I have received from CMEx (Caribbean Media Exchange) last August a fellowship to attend from September 30 to October 4 the 19th annual gathering of hotel owners, journalists, government officials, academicians and students interested in the area of sustainable tourism to reflect and ponder about the future and the impact on growth and development of the industry. The fellowship included lodging and meals, not the airfare.
I approached the Ministry of Tourism in Haiti to contribute to my travel expenses in exchange for doing some promotion on behalf of Haiti and its tourist industry. I was told flat out that no money was available for such imitative. I also approached the ATA -- the association of travel agents and hotel owners. The president, Mr Jean Bernard Simonnet, received me with a Cuban cigar on hand, flanked with an arrogance that had the typical flair of a semi-French and semi-Haitian bourgeois attitude.
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| Jean H Charles MSW, JD is Executive Director of AINDOH Inc a non profit organization dedicated to building a kinder and gentle Caribbean zone for all. He can be reached at: jeanhcharles@aol |
I was scolded (as if I was the Haitian government!) for being so derelict concerning the growth of the tourism industry in the country. I refrained from responding accordingly because I plan to come back to Mr Simonnet to advocate for his releasing some of his parrots into the wild landscape of Labadie, completing the aura of enchantment that makes the area so mysterious and so idyllic to the thousands of tourists from the cruise ship of Royal Caribbean Line.
The beautiful hotel Cormier's Plage grooms on its grounds a nursery of outstanding parrots that outgrow their cage. Convincing the owner that it is a civic, indeed a divine duty to endow Haiti with this bounty is part of God' design to enrich this island with the nature and the species that made Christopher Columbus said in looking at the island for the first time: "Ayti! It is indeed marvelous!" This advocacy will be my calling until I succeed!
Getting into Kingston, Jamaica, the venue of the conference was not easy. I found to my surprise that the colonial way is the only way to go to Jamaica from Haiti, passing through Miami or New York. I opted for New York. So I ended up flying from Port au Prince to New York via Miami in one day and the next day I flew from New York to Kingston via Miami.
Going to Jamaica has always been for me like approaching a nirvana. I am reputed to have that je ne sais quoi penchant for the Jamaican women. I have publicly said that they represent the best that black women have to offer and to emulate: self assured, well integrated, self realized, they are confident in their feminism while not afraid to take care of business, of their men, their children and their churches!
Indeed, they people the customs as well as the immigration area; later I will find them all over the city with their fine black suits, mending the business of the country. I have made a long detour equal to my traveling schedule to arrive to the business at hand, which is sustainable tourism!
President Rene Preval of Haiti has in the past consulted the former Prime Minister of Jamaica, Portia Simpson Miller, to inquire about the secret that Jamaica had up its sleeve to succeed so well in the area of tourism. The answer is simple: Jamaica utilizes sustainable tourism as a tool of development. Haiti has a master plan that remains only on paper!
In reality, it does not put the focus on the rehabilitation of its environment, the rebuilding of its infrastructure and invigorating its institutions for the benefit of its people first and its tourists by ricochet.
The take away of the Conference was tourism is the vehicle to propel one's country to build its infrastructure with a forward vision, to create its institutions with a hospitable engagement, while instilling the sense of fairness, ethics and courtesy amongst and for everyone.
Bevan Springer (president of CMEx), a scion of a great Barbadian family that includes his father, the ethicist Dr Basil Springer, put it best: "Sustainable tourism is a vehicle to boost farmers' incomes while increasing local foods in hotels through enhancing faith and medical tourism to greater collaboration with the Caribbean Diaspora and the rest of the world."
The organization is fortunate to be a lean and potentially forceful instrument for the governments, the hotel owners and those who rely on tourism in general for continuous vitality. Its vice president Lelaulu (who is also president of Counterpart International), who hails from Samoa, is a visionary with the charm and the simplicity of a Nehru. Its secretary, Simone Christian from Trinidad and Tobago, has the efficiency and the congeniality of a mother goose... I have suggested to the president and the vice president to become bolder in engaging in the deliberations the policy makers of each island for quicker results and outcome on behalf of the people and the tourists.
Mr Lelaulu, with his extensive knowledge of men and things, defines tourism as the largest voluntary transfer of resources from the rich to the poor. Akin to the Good Samaritan of the Bible, the tourist is invited to one's home with all the prescribed hospitality of caring for each other. In return, tourism is a tool to fight poverty. It creates wealth for those who have little. To whom it is given, more is granted! He said that one of the most current complaints of tourists is they are not eating enough local food in the hotels. St Lucia has succeeded in an experiment of distributing from the farmers to the chefs at the hotels the culinary heritage of the country to the greater world.
CMEx is advocating a program called "roots to restaurant" in the Caribbean. It is a program for all those aid agencies interested in development to incubate the access to and the growing of organic produce by small farmers to feed the hungry tourists in the fine hotels of the region.
CMEx is also launching the theme of Kingston as the cultural capital of the Caribbean. Jamaica has succeeded with Ocho Rios, Negril and Montego Bay as tourist hubs; it is now time to bring back the renaissance of Kingston as the true capital of the arts, fine cuisine and good living. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Kingston, the home of Bob Marley, could be compared to any city of the south of the United States, large avenues, efficient bus service and vibrant night life.
The chairman of the Jamaican Tourist Board, John Lynch, explained that 75 percent of the employment in the country is linked to the tourism industry. In the United States it is an $11.684 billion industry, which is being promoted not only by the Federal government but also by each state. The governors have found out that tourism means jobs for agriculture, for the arts, for shopkeepers and now for the medical field. In spite of the depression, people will preserve their godly right to travel.
Plaques and honors were distributed at the final banquet to several honorees including:
- The minister of tourism of Jamaica, Mr Edmund Curtis Bartlett (Exemplary award);
- Professor Noel Brown, president of the Friends of the United Nations;
- The prime minister of Bermuda, the Honorable Dr Ewart Frederick Brown (World leadership award). At the ceremony, I was pleasantly educated to the power of love, watching the prime minister of Bermuda holding and caressing lovingly the hand of his beautiful wife. Hopefully I will be invited to their country to see with my own eyes, in action, the power of love of the doctor, king philosopher for his people!
- Members of the media also received awards: the photographer Margot Jordan; the columnist of the Jamaica Observer, Ingrid Brown; Dennis Morrison of the Gleaner, as well as Inderia Saunders of the Nassau Guardian.
At the end of the day, I said to myself how can Haiti be at least like Jamaica!
This vista is not for tomorrow, with the culture of ineptitude and mediocrity pregnant with arrogance imposed upon Haiti by its own rulers and supported and incubated by the international community -- we may need another Bookman (from Jamaica) to ignite the second and true revolution in Haiti where she will become hospitable first, to its people and later to the tourists as an icing on the cake!
Note: While the 19th CMEx conference took place at the Pegasus hotel in Kingston Jamaica, preparations are on the way for the 20th CMEx gathering on tourism to take place at the Renaissance Hotel in Georgetown, Guyana. I was hosted at the Spanish Court Hotel in Kingston. I bet the Renaissance to beat my hospitality at the Spanish Court!
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