Haiti -- The Resort Of Dreams: If You Fix It, They Will Come

MONTROUIS, Haiti - Neither the spongy brown slime on the steps of the swimming pool nor more than a month trying to work without a telephone dissuaded Pierre Braet from trying to reopen the Club Med in Haiti.

He is not even counting on tourists, once the resort is ready in February.

"The future will teach us," said Braet, a barrel-shaped Belgian and former boxer who prowls the empty grounds in sweatpants each morning, watching birds and checking on renovations. "People have to feel safe when they're coming to a country."

The government of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide is hoping for a revival of tourism in Haiti, which would have been a tasteless oxymoron only a few months ago. Since Club Mediterranee is a symbol of orderly enthusiasm, of safe holidays with steadily-scheduled activities, its reopening would be a milestone.

Although other companies have expressed interest in developing resorts, Club Med, which opened here in 1980, is the first major firm to spend money on the prospect of renewing tourism in Haiti. Royal Caribbean Cruise Line already has announced it will again add Haiti as a port of call beginning tomorrow, but only as a brief stopover on Caribbean cruises (see story below).

There are 200 Clubs Med around the world, and Yugoslavia is the only other place where they are closed due to political turmoil.

Some R&R

For now, part of the Haitian Club Med's beach is occupied during the day by U.S. soldiers, resting and relaxing after peeling off their camouflage fatigues and settling with audible sighs into lounge chairs. Since the U.S. armed forces rented the northern part of the resort for soldiers' use a month ago, they have arrived by bus every morning at 8:30, with a contingent of Military Police to guard them.

A plastic-covered beach sign reminds the soldiers of what they are still forbidden to do, including: "engage in romantic activities or sexually harass anyone, drink alcohol, overexpose yourself to the sun."

Since the troops' strict code of conduct in Haiti instructs them not even to roll up their uniform sleeves in public, a snooze on a deserted beach is a great relief. Four tennis courts and a basketball court have been reconditioned for their use.

The soldiers' presence is also a relief to Braet, since it is helping to pay the wages of more than 100 Haitian employees helping restore the resort.

`Hot' and `shaking'

Nearly all its 250 rooms remain closed, but their outer walls have been newly painted pink, orange, red and green - a jolt of gaiety in the quiet landscape.

The chief of village, as Braet is titled, also has a staff of 15 expatriates, mostly French, who are working on the plumbing, the generator plant and the swimming pool. The lengthy beach has been cleaned. At other Clubs Med, the young men would be leading groups of tourists in calisthenics and egg-tossing on the sand.

"This installation will be very hot," said Sylvain, a practical young member of the team, originally from Brittany. "It's got a disco in the open air and two restaurants outdoors. It should shake plenty at night, too."

On Christmas evening the expatriate crew served each other drinks at the disco's bar, and one of them manned its glassed-in deejay booth, blasting music over the empty dance floor while the rest ate a sumptuous supper at a long outdoor table. It was the hottest nightlife the Club Med has seen in a while.

A fluid environment

Club Med has now been closed for seven years, during which time Haiti had seven to 10 governments, depending on whether you count de factos, exiles, and one that lasted two days.

Throughout those years, Club Med's Paris headquarters continued to pay rent for its land to Haitian governments, and all or part of the wages of 100 Club Med Haitian employees. About 50 of them patrolled the empty grounds day after day for years.

Twice before, Club Mediterranee's CEO, Serge Trigano, decided to reopen in Haiti but backed off when politics intervened, Braet said. A year ago, when Haiti's crisis seemed endless, he thought of turning the facility into a hospital.

So when Braet arrived in Haiti on Dec. 9, after driving about 60 miles from Port-au-Prince, he found the place in astonishingly good shape, considering its long disuse. It grounds are still clean and carefully landscaped. Even the pictures on the walls are intact. Hundreds of tables and chairs are neatly stacked inside the rooms, waiting.

Working together on the grounds or sharing meals at their communal tables, Braet and "my boys," as he calls them, seem like placid monks in a multicolored monastery.

But the swimming pool can't be properly cleaned, Braet said, until Haitian customs - with whom he has been battling - releases his shipment of special acid to eat away the slime. After a month with no telephone service, two lines suddenly came to life the day after Club Med representatives met with Prime Minister Smarck Michel and again threatened to pull out of Haiti.

Restoring an image

One of the Aristide government's main goals is to improve Haiti's image, seeking the return of investors and tourists. The new secretary of state for tourism, Maryse Pennett, recalled wistfully that Haiti was once a fashionable, exotic destination for tourists. In the 1970s, she claimed, Haiti attracted more visitors than the neighboring Dominican Republic, whose tourist beaches are crowded now.

For the present, Pennett said, the government is aiming at Haitian Americans who are "more tolerant" of Haitian conditions than other foreigners. "They are less demanding than an American who wants an air conditioner in his room that's working, and hot water. They've lived in rough conditions."

Pennett said she plans to promote two annual voodoo festivals, at Souvenance and Saut d'Eau, to visiting Haitian Americans this year.

Daunting destination

Small resort hotels, like Cormier Plage near the northern city of Cap-Haitien, cater to wealthy Haitians and foreigners living in Haiti, including missionaries, volunteer doctors and filmmakers. Club Med hopes to capture some of this internal trade.

As for foreign tourists, Pennett said, "The work of our secretariat will be toward the future, rather than on the present" - about 10 years from now, she added. Today, Haiti cannot even provide proper health services for tourists who fall ill, she said, and even experienced travelers find the international airport, crowded with hundreds of redcaps and beggars, daunting.

Braet remarked with exasperation that traffic near the airport is so bad that he simply got out of his car and walked to a recent appointment nearby.

At other Clubs Med where he has worked during his 26-year career in the organization, he noted:

"We had a cyclone. It was nothing compared to this. I was in Israel when they attacked Lebanon. I was in the Maldives when they made a coup d'etat. Those are things that can be fixed in 15 days. Here, it's the first time . . . that we are in a country, let us call it dead, post-war."