12632: Hatian botanical gardens (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: MaryEllen Sanok <potteryrn@yahoo.com>

PORT-AU-PRINCE JOURNAL


In Katherine Dunham's Eden, Invaders From Hell

By DAVID GONZALEZ


ORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti ‹ The grounds are choked with
garbage and reek of waste. The springs are covered
with gray scum. The villas where topless socialites
and decadent rakes lounged by poolside have been
turned into bricked-up fortresses. The old resort is
dead.

But all around there is life. Too much life, it turns
out.
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The land, a cool forest of dangling vines and towering
trees that offer up medicinal bark and sweet fruits,
is occupied by an armed gang and hundreds of
squatters, who have overrun and ravaged what was once
a rare oasis.

Katherine Dunham, the American anthropologist and
dancer who now lives in New York but has long loved
Haiti and its culture, has owned this 45-acre haven in
the middle of Port-au-Prince for more than 60 years.

Even now, she dreams of bestowing her garden on the
Haitian people, and has succeeded in having it
recognized as the only botanical garden in a country
where poverty has pressed on the land, stripping it of
countless trees that have been sold in marketplaces as
charcoal chunks.

A garden may seem insignificant given Haiti's endless
social and environmental problems. But Ms. Dunham's
struggle to preserve this patch of hope and
traditional culture amid a landscape of misery is a
reflection of how politics and poverty thwart the best
intentions.

"The city and the island need a kind of recognition of
their significance," said Ms. Dunham, who is 94, in a
telephone interview from the United States. "I look at
the garden as one of the things that could help."

Her love affair with the garden grew from her romance
with the country, which she first visited in the
1930's to do research on sacred dance. The property
had once been home to Pauline Bonaparte, Napoleon's
sister, and Charles Leclerc, whom Napoleon had sent to
Haiti in an ill-fated attempt to quell the slave
revolt that ultimately led to the nation's
independence in 1804.

Over the years it had been a place where the
African-tinged rituals known as voodoo played out
under the trees. In the 1970's, Ms. Dunham leased the
forest to a French hotelier, who turned it into
Habitation Leclerc, a playground for the rich that
included 35 villas. Ms. Dunham and her husband moved
to a smaller property they had across the road.

The turmoil of the fall of the Duvalier dictatorship
in 1985 claimed the hotel, which closed and was
ransacked by employees. But Ms. Dunham then envisioned
the forest as a botanical garden, and she succeeded in
gaining international recognition for the estate as
such by 1995. She last visited in 1996, she said.

The following year, two British botanists doing
research on the grounds were attacked and robbed by
members of a gang that calls itself the Red Army. It
went on to occupy the property and terrorize the
adjoining neighborhood of Martissant.

Cameron Brohman, a Canadian who has been helping Ms.
Dunham preserve the forest, said the gang soon began
using it as a hide-out from the police. They charged
the squatters for the right to live in the old villas.


Mr. Brohman has tried for more than two years to
dislodge the gang, and was successful in obtaining a
court order of eviction last year. Now he faces a
quandary: the police say they will do nothing until
the property is a functioning botanical garden, while
prospective donors and research groups won't go near
the place until the police secure it.

"A botanical garden is being held hostage by a
criminal gang," he said. "The police do nothing to
stop the threat to what could be an important center
for developing policies to stop the environmental
crisis."

To Ms. Dunham's supporters, the Haitian government's
inaction seems particularly irresponsible. They recall
that she went on a 47-day hunger strike 10 years ago
to protest the United States' policy of repatriating
Haitian boat people.

For now, Mr. Brohman pays members of the riot police
to patrol the area and respond to his calls when he
learns someone may be planning to cut down a tree.

"I pay them to put some fear into them and let them
know we got bigger guns," he said.

The leader of the Red Army, in turn, sent a message to
Mr. Brohman saying his group was protecting the forest
and should be paid back wages for their work.

"What have they protected?" said Mr. Brohman as he
walked through the forest one recent morning, past a
young man who demanded a dollar from him.

The old stables are a graffiti-covered shell. An
aviary nestled in a plaza is now a chicken coop
covered with palm fronds. The old casino and disco is
dark, but people still venture to it to fill buckets
with spring water.

Like Ms. Dunham, Mr. Brohman and his colleagues cling
stubbornly to their vision for the garden. To them,
the forest has personality and power, not just to heal
the body with its natural medicines, but also to salve
the soul with its spirit. The mapou trees that emerge
above natural springs are a divine sign of providence,
they said.

"They are the house of the spirits," said Maxo Rimpel,
a security officer for Ms. Dunham, as he led a group
of visitors through the trees, which he said fed and
healed his ancestors. "If you destroy the house of the
spirits, then you perish."

Another visitor, Janine Pierre, who lives nearby, said
she had come to the forest after awakening from a
dream.

"Last night I dreamed the springs were clean," she
said. "I dreamed I had cleaned the source. So that
means I must clean it. This is a sacred yard."



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