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Welcome `home,' Michaëlle Jean: The Governor General will drop by the seaside town of Jacmel next week during her visit to Haiti. She wasn't born there, never lived there, but residents claim her as their own,

Francine Kopun writes

May 13, 2006. 01:00 AM

Jacmel, Haiti?Asked what she thinks of the upcoming visit to this small seaside town by Canada's Haitian-born Governor General, Madame Margarette Martin backs up and delivers a look that could roughly be translated as: "Girlfriend, did you leave your brains in Canada?"

"First of all," says Martin, the Haitian government official charged with helping organize the festivities in Jacmel to welcome Governor General Michaëlle Jean next week, "first of all, she's Jacmellian. She's from Jacmel."

A man standing beside her whispers something into Martin's ear.

She corrects herself, although clearly it is to her only a detail that Jean wasn't born in Jacmel and never lived there.

"She's the daughter of a Jacmellian," Martin continues. "Ensuite, she brings honour to our country. She's an immigrant. She brought herself up to the position she's in. And she's black! Une négresse! And she's a woman!"

Martin finishes with a triumphal flourish of the head and hand. Take that back to Canada.

To say that those in Jacmel who know about Jean's visit here on Tuesday are bursting with pride is something of an understatement.

Nicolas Greffin, the town's soft-spoken mayor, says he never thought he'd be called upon to officiate at such a momentous occasion.

"For us, she's Jacmellian. She's coming home," he said.

He expects close to the entire population of 40,000 to turn out.

Jacmel, a 15-minute flight from the capital of Port-au-Prince, or a two-to-three-hour drive through choking traffic and over country roads wrecked by flooding, is the only stop outside of Port-au-Prince that Jean will make during her four-day visit to Haiti.

Her arrival in Port-au-Prince today marks the beginning of her visit. Tomorrow, she will attend the inauguration of the country's new president, René Préval.

The daughter of a Haitian school principal and a nurse, Jean, who was born in Port-au-Prince, immigrated to Canada with her family when she was 11 to escape the brutal regime of François (Papa Doc) Duvalier. This visit marks the first time she returns to the country in her official role as governor general.

She is returning to a country wrecked from being at war for a generation. Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, and one of the most violent.

The streets of Port-au-Prince are cratered, residents live in desperate slums or in small, shabby cement houses clinging to the hillsides of the city. The city has been without electricity for more than a week.

The details of her visit have been kept under wraps for security reasons. Even employees at the hotel where she will stay in Port-au-Prince won't confirm she is coming.

In Jacmel, only the officials planning her visit and her relatives know of her arrival next week. Her own relatives aren't sure how much time, if any, they will get to spend with her.

Not that they're complaining. In addition to a family resemblance, Jean's cousins here share her remarkable warm dignity and unfailing politeness.

Her cousin Maud Oriol Khawly operates a hardware store of sorts in Jacmel, working from a small desk and chair on a platform at the top of a winding metal staircase.

From her perch overlooking her employees and the store, she recalls with delight that Jean was an exceptionally sweet and calm girl.

Neither she nor her cousin Marie Marthe Oriol Lafontant, who also lives in Jacmel, has seen Jean in a long time ? not since she visited in the mid-1990s with her filmmaker husband, Jean-Daniel Lafond, to make a movie about her uncle, a poet.

But Lafontant travelled to Canada many years ago, including Ottawa, and jokes that she has a picture of the Governor General's house, at least. "So, I know the house," she laughs, shrugging.

Eager to share what they know about Jean, Khawly gets her sister, Laurence Oriol, on the phone to talk about her.

"She was disciplined, smiling, very polite, studious, a model young girl, a model child, and very respectful," says Oriol, who will be part of the welcoming committee in Jacmel.

Among the many remembrances sparked by her upcoming visit, there is a telling remark that perhaps helps explain her ascension to governor general in her adopted country.

Michaëlle Craan is a Jacmellian who worked with Jean when she came to Jacmel to make the film about her uncle, and who is now part of the planning committee for Jean's visit next week.

"She's very open, but very firm," says Craan. "She knows what she wants."