Vibrant, beautiful Caribbean island bowed down by poverty

LETTER FROM HAITI:PORT SALUT, a teeming, dusty town on the south west tip of Haiti, gives you an inkling of how things could be different for the Caribbean nation which enjoys the status of poorest country in the western hemisphere.

It's a colourful, busy place. Ramshackle huts and gaudily painted corrugated iron kiosks selling lottery tickets jostle with shabby municipal buildings in the sweltering heat.

It is the rainy season, and freshly harvested corn is spread on the pavements, fighting for space with motorcycle repair men, snack sellers, piles of second-hand clothes and impromptu rubbish dumps. School children dressed in immaculate gingham uniforms stand out from the bustling crowd, whose clothes have for the most part seen better days.

There is little to detain the traveller in Port Salut, but drive five minutes up the coast to the serviceable but tired Hotel de Ville and it becomes clear that Haiti has in abundance the assets that characterise the other Caribbean islands, and for most of them form the basis of their economy; beautiful beaches, abundant sunshine and a friendly easy-going people.

In addition, having been founded by French buccaneers in the 1600s and gained independence in a slave revolt in 1804, Haiti has a historical and cultural depth that few other Caribbean islands bar Cuba can rival.

For now, any traveller taking a dip at Port Salut's palm-fringed beaches will find it hard not to be concerned about what passes for the town drains - and where their contents go.

The decades-long tussle for power between various ruling elites, the army and a populist movement lead by charismatic former priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide has meant the economy has been a secondary concern at best for most of the last 20 years.

Depending on your point of view, the United States has either propped the country up for the most of the last century or is the prime architect of the chaos, meddling in Haiti's affairs to ensure a government that suits its regional agenda.

Whatever the reason, the consequences of Haiti's economic failure are plain to see in Port Salut and the surrounding countryside. Foreigners travelling in even this relatively quiet backwater must be conscious of security, which generally means a western bodyguard. Kidnapping for ransom has become a not too pleasant cottage industry.

Once you leave the newish tarmac road from the capital Port au Prince, which is being built by the Taiwanese, a four-wheel drive is deemed necessary to negotiate the degraded secondary roads, although the locals get by on a combination of pick-ups, lorries, motorcycles and bikes.

The red-and-white-painted masts erected by privately owned mobile phone companies - including Denis O'Brien's Digicel - stand out in stark contrast to the tottering electricity poles that represent the best efforts of the state to provide infrastructure.

In Port Salut, the local hospital relies on the supply of doctors from neighbouring Cuba to provide a basic level of healthcare which supports the lowest life expectancy and the highest infant mortality rates in the region.

Despite the fertile soil and almost ideal conditions for agriculture, the country's 11 million inhabitants cannot feed themselves. Land redistribution and the free-market-inspired abolition of protective tariffs on local staples such as rice have collapsed commercial agriculture. Small holdings of corn and bananas appear half-heartedly cultivated, while bags of rice stamped with the stars and stripes of the US food aid programme are piled on the roadside.

The country is enjoying a period of relative stability in the wake of the ousting of Aristide in 2004, and aid is flowing once again, but few Haitians believe things will be better this time around.

Aid has failed to solve the country's problems, says Jean Maurice Buteau, a businessman and former head of the presidential sub-commission on agriculture under both Aristide and his successor, Rene Preval.

NGOs, of which Haiti has an extraordinary number - many with links to neoconservative American groups - have also failed, according to Buteau, who runs a fruit exporting business in Port au Prince.

Encouraging a latent sense of enterprise among the people of Haiti is the best hope of stimulating the economy, he believes. But it is difficult in a country where farmers leave irrigation systems to rot, and depend instead on the rains to grow a single crop of corn on lands that could support two or three harvests a year. Most smallholders cannot invest the five years it takes for a mango tree - the most valuable export crop - to fruit for the first time, says Buteau.

But the opportunities are there. The collapse of the agricultural sector over the past 20 years has meant that farmers can't afford either fertiliser or pesticide, meaning that agriculture is almost entirely organic, and produce - if it can be got to international markets - can demand premium prices.

And there are signs of enterprise amid the prevalent apathy. Haitians are using call credits bought for them by relations living abroad, and the countryside is now dotted with shacks advertising them for sale.

But in Port Salut they still wait for the tourists to come.