Haiti is one of the least forums on earth I would expect an extravagant success of the Dinner in White phenomenon. With the majority of its population living in extreme poverty, I would imagine that this movement that spans across the globe would not find a home in Haiti. Yet the Haiti nation is filled with splendor mixed with squalor. The Dinner in White on Saturday, November 15, at Le Montcel near the bucolic village of Furcy was an event that any society page would love to stamp in their magazine.
I was invited by Wellcom, the public relations firm run by the three most hospitable ladies that I know -- Milena Sandler, Stephanie Armand, and Coralie Dehien. I arrived early at the departure point, the Karibe hotel in Petionville. The buzz was already in the air, gentlemen and genteel ladies in white attire were showing their wear and who could outdo the other in elegance and in chivalry.
The Diner en Blanc as it is called in French is the godchild of a French expatriate by the name of Francois Pasquier, who on his return to France found himself without friends. To reconnect with his old acquaintances, he organized a dinner and asked the few friends he could find to get together at a specific place, bringing their own plates and their own food and wearing white attire so he or she would be recognized by each other.
The next dinner was so successful that it boomeranged first to Canada and then to the rest of the world. It is a nonprofit event, with the mission to have a good time with friends and family in a setting that is enchanting and secret up to the last minute.
There were some 800 guests to the dinner in Haiti at its second edition, with some of the guests travelling from the United States, Canada and Martinique to attend to the party. It takes ingenuity, strategic planning and enthusiastic leadership to organize this gargantuan event, with some 38 buses trailing in a mountain setting, with no one aware of the exact place for the dinner.
Yet everything went up to perfection, the band, the men setting the table and the chairs, the women, having prepared the food, laying it on the table with the best dinner plates, glasses, and tableware they could fetch from home. It was like in a fairy story, with each table and each family trying to win the prize of the most decorative setting.
The ritual of the dinner includes sending off a white balloon into the air, fireworks and dancing, with the event ending around 10 pm trailing back to the city where life will once again resume its normal and ordinary course.
The Diner en Blanc concept could have taken a page from the recent book by Valentino Garavani: "At the Emperor's table", where Mr Garavani lamented in a recent article produced by the New York Times that: "Once upon a time it was usual to give beautiful dinners, in the 1980s, the 1990s, but now it is all seen as less important. It is unfortunate. A beautiful, interesting table is an expression of a joy and respect for your guests, or just yourself. Even when I eat alone, I always have the table set in an amusing way."
The Haiti Diner en Blanc is the brainchild of a Canadian-Haitian lady, Ingrid Enriquez Donissaint, who set foot in Haiti only three years ago for the first time. She connected with Johanne Buteau, whose husband runs some of the best hotels in the city, including Kinam I and Kinam II, as well as the magnificent and renovated Karibe. I have always expressed to Richard my admiration for his budding faith in Haiti as he re-invests every dime gained from his hospitality brand back into the island.
Yet, I left the party wanting. I wish the event was for a cause, such as bringing back courtesy, chivalry and protocol into Haiti. Since the advent of the democratic revolution in 1987, from the coming of the dictatorial regime in 1957, Haiti went down in terms of standard of elegance, noblesse oblige and plain politeness.
The gallant ladies who organize the event could and should create a mechanism to invest through seminars, contests and other ways to teach the good manners that were the fabric of Haiti old school.
The Diner en Blanc organization should organize a model program with seminars and domestic manners for the young ladies of say the Marie Jeanne Lyceum that provide such an excellent classical education for the young ladies from the working class.
Haiti, always in a pioneering spirit, could even serve as a model for the dozen worldly venues that entertain the Dinner en Blanc International. In a world where the rich as well as the poor are influenced by the long hand of the American television machine propagating the subculture of bad manners and inelegance. Dinner en Blanc is a school of thought that needs bold leadership to assert itself as a trend to emulate in rich as well as in poor countries as well as in rich as well as in poor homes.
The public relations firm that organizes the invitations for the press could also arrange for each media organization to seat and break bread with one of the family at the Diner en Blanc. As such, preparing a special dinner for the press would not be necessary. In addition, they would have more stories to ruminate from.
In the end a big hug for the organizers, having the party at Le Village exemplifies the slogan of the ranch which is Haiti of tomorrow. I have seen the Haiti of tomorrow. May it extend to the whole country! May it not be a fairy event for just one night! May food in quantity and good manners in profusion be the staple lifestyle of most in a country so rich and so beautiful, yet so sad and as poor as it is trying to find its rightful place in this world!
Jean H Charles LLB, MSW, JD is a syndicated columnist with Caribbean News Now. He can be reached at: jeanhcharles@aol.com and followed for past essays at Caribbeannewsnow/Haiti.
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