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Soccer in Haiti

One of my fondest memories of Haiti is early-morning soccer, when we got up at 5:00 to travel in a pickup truck to a large soccer field by the ocean. You would think it would be really cold at 5:00, but the weather in Haiti is so nice that you could wear shorts and a t-shirt and still not be cold. Part of the fun of these mornings was the trip to the field. Haitians don’t have the same driving rules that we do: they don’t have lanes or speed limits, so when we came on a slowly-moving motorcyclist, bicyclist, or tap-tap filled with people, we could honk our horn and speed around them. It isn’t always safe, but that and the bumpy road meant you had to hang on to the back of the truck.

When we got there on one day, I volunteered to be the goalie for our side. At first, I did pretty well. I blocked two or three shots, but I think that only made a few of the kids on the opposite team mad, because they shot lots more, and most of their shots got past me. On another day, we played tag on the field. Since there was no place to hide, you simply had to run for your life. Playing soccer with the kids was our way of sharing time with them. It was this time on the soccer field that allowed the kids to get to know us, even if we weren’t very good goalies.
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