EGO Three

EGO Three 05-16-2016

Soccer is the sport of choice in Haiti. This is clear to see throughout the country. Here at Ebenezer Glenn Orphanage (EGO) the sport can be seen from the baby yard to the large soccer field on the Orphanage grounds. One of the older boys Pudens loves to invite his neighborhood friends to play soccer here daily if possible. I’ve seen country kids playing between rice fields with a ball made of wound up rags, Mountain kids playing on a plateau where the out of bounds line is a 500 ft slope to the next piece of flat ground below. When it rains kids at the Nan Wo school strip down to there underwear and play bare foot through the large ponds of water on their playing field. John & Gabe Robinson brought an American twist to this soccer crazed school boy’s soaked to the bone game.

Thursday was a big soccer day for the Nan Wo school. The match was played in Dessalines on a full-sized field; Nan Wo verses the Free Methodist school. I’m not sure where all the players came from. In my opinion, it looked like a good portion of the players on each team were well beyond the school age kids at our school. The match was to start at 3pm, our team arrived 3:30 in grand style on about 6 motorcycles. Warm up was postponed for at least 30 minuets due to heavy rain. 15 minutes after the rain slowed down both teams began their stretching, chanting, and basic psych-out warm up procedures. The Free Methodists were good at the sport of intimidation….. I was sure they were going to tromp us into the ground.

The game turned out to be a very even match. Both teams were every bit as good as many of the collage games I’ve seen. Fact be known, I forgot I was in Haiti…. sport matches can do that. The players played with their all, rough and tumble; the physical game produced charlie-horses, fake follows, impacts which knocked the air out of their opponent, etc. Field rash was the least of their injuries.

Much to my surprise, The Methodist kicked in a last minute goal, winning the match 1 to 0.

Louinet was very disappointed…. I figure, no worries, we will flunk all the good players and have a bigger team next year…..