Haitian kids dream of football glory in stadium camp

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PORT-AU-PRINCE, Feb 1, 2010 (AFP) - On the dusty artificial turf of Haiti's national stadium a group of children played out their football fantasies, kicking the ball next to scrappy shelters, ignoring the stench from human waste on the sidelines.

The boys are among the 4,000 refugees that fled to the Sylvio Cator stadium following the cataclysmic January 12 earthquake that destroyed much of the capital Port-au-Prince.

These kids know they could have it much worse -- here attention to their uprooted lives is diverted by sport.

James Ly Harchill, 6, watched his friends shoot penalties into the full-sized goal mouth. Pretty much every shot goes in; the cross bar is twice the height of the diminutive pre-teen keeper.

"We play football everyday," Harchill smiles proudly, bouncing his half-deflated ball on the spongy artificial surface.

The boy loves football, his favorite team is Brazil, and he wants to play for Haiti when he grows up -- some things even an earthquake can't change.

What the disaster did do was take away southern Haiti's professional and amateur playgrounds.

In contrast to its neighbor on the island of Hispaniola, the baseball-crazed Dominican Republic, Haiti's passion is football.

Before the earthquake impromptu games sprung up on any space available, with packs of youngsters kicking up dust amid the mountains of trash that litter the poorest country in the western hemisphere.

Now all open space, especially the Port-au-Prince parks, have been turned into refugee camps, home to hundreds of thousands of Haitians that huddle in make-shift tent villages.

Haiti's national football championship, which would have resumed this weekend, has been suspended for at least six months, said Gary Nicolas, president of the National Football League.

The earthquake "was a true disaster for Haitian football," Nicolas told AFP.

The go-to Internet page for Haiti football scores, www.haitifoot.com, is down and its front page directs visitors to an aid donation website.

The Haitian Football Federation lost 30 employees, according to the body's president Yves Jean-Bart.

When the quake struck the federation's headquarters collapsed into a pile of twisted metal and concrete. Every other structure in the neighborhood -- at least their top floors -- shook to the ground, and most surviving buildings were severely damaged.

Bodies are still buried deep under the federation building debris.

Employees -- who picked through the rubble of their former offices, pulling out crumpled reports and files of football statistics -- said they can't reach the bodies, but judging from the sweet smell of rotting flesh that wafts through the site they know where they are.

Federation official Saint-Louis Rolny said that in the absence of higher authorities he's responsible for the stadium, and by default, its current residents. But there is little he can do for them.

"There is no food," he said with a sigh, although he adds that when people get food from the daily distribution sites, they share it.

Football is not a top priority in these "exceptional circumstances," he told AFP, sitting behind a battered desk in an empty room accessed from the stadium's parking lot.

The government opened up the 30,000-seater stadium after the quake to anyone who needed a place to live. The stadium survived the quake well, though part of its facade collapsed.

In the stadium parking lot, where raucous fans once streamed, woman and children now wash themselves with buckets of bright soapy water.

Rolny said that most of Haiti's national team, which plays in US and European clubs, were abroad and safe when the disaster struck.

"We have to let people take the fields to sleep. We have no choice," Rolny said. "But, we will play again.

"The people won't stop playing," he said.

On the stadium field, Gerard Rene, who at 16 feels he is old enough to boss around the younger boys, sneered at the idea of living at one of the city's other camps like the overcrowded Champs de Mars near Haiti's collapsed presidential palace.

"They don't have anything there, but here we have the goals," he said, gesturing at the netted frame with a grin.

All the boys, ranging in age from four to around 15, said they dream of playing against Brazil on the same field one day -- but for now, they sleep here.