You're absolutely right. The author had all kinds of opportunities to write the story so that various offensive elements would have been less- (or even non-) offensive. But unfortunately, rather than attributing Jensen's inability to communicate with most Haitians to the very-common situation of American foreign-language education being so devalued that students for whom English is their first language can be effectively illiterate in the language they studied for years, the author did choose to lay all blame for lack of communication between Jensen and non-English-speaking Haitians on the false notion that Haitian Creole is so completely different from 'normal', 'correct' French that any time a Haitian other than Abraham (with his so-'charming' broken English) spoke, all Jensen heard was "gibbering" or "jabbering" (or "bebe mwen").

It's even more unfortunate that such a situation is so ludicrously unlikely. My command of French is pretty much limited to the level of "croissant", "je ne comprends pas," and "merci" -- and yet, when I visit, for example, a Haitian hair salon where the owner-operators are speaking Creole, I can often get at least discern what topic they're discussing, if not the details... and, more importantly, they understand my lousy fucking handful of 'proper' French phrases just fine.

This is, of course, just one of many problems with the story which, in addition to being grossly offensive, would have been easy to correct with a bare minimum of research -- or to avoid by setting the story in a location the author either wasn't completely ignorant about or simply made up. A nice thing about fiction is that it's perfectly acceptable to use a fictional setting, so long as the place imagined isn't problematic in other ways.