8410: Bobby Duval's soccer program helps spread hope in Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Tttnhm@aol.com

Bobby Duval's soccer program helps spread hope in Haiti
By Tim Collie 
Sun Sentinel Staff Writer 
Posted June 20 2001 
  
PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI -- By any measure, Bobby Duval has more than paid his 
dues as a social activist. Nearing 50, he might be forgiven for kicking back 
and enjoying life.

He has been imprisoned, starved and tortured in Haiti's notorious Fort 
Dimanche prison. He saw hundreds of fellow activists die during a stint there 
opposing the dictatorship of the Duvalier family. Many were beaten to death 
in front of him.

He's a former soccer star, affluent, American-educated and speaks French and 
English. A son of Creole elites, he might be just as at home shopping in 
Paris, or coaching at one of his old haunts in Boston or Montreal.

Yet here he is on a hot Saturday morning, on a dusty playing field, 
surrounded by hundreds of poor children, teaching them skills their families 
cannot afford, raising hopes they're not supposed to have.

"There's no big deal, really," he says. "I just decided that this is my 
country and I was going to do my best to make a change here. That's all."

That's not all to the 300 or so children who attend Athletics of Haiti, a 
novel program that offers sports, food and education to children from the 
vast slums of Port-au-Prince. Against odds every bit as formidable as the 
struggle for democracy here, Duval has kept the program running for five 
years of turmoil in Haiti.

Since 1996, he has run Athletics on a 15-acre compound near the capital 
city's international airport and not far from Cité Soleil, one of Haiti's 
most notorious urban slums. The children in the program are given medical 
checkups, tutoring and, of course, plenty of coaching. They're given healthy 
meals each week, and their parents are counseled on education and other 
matters.

The immediate aim is to provide an escape for the athletic talent that might 
be hidden in the country's vast shantytowns. Soccer is the national sport in 
Haiti, but the country's deep poverty and class differences are formidable 
barriers for even the most talented among the poor.

The best soccer clubs and schools are private and tend to cater to the small 
middle class and elites. Basketball also is taking off here -- kids can be 
found playing on many streets -- and Duval is expanding efforts to build 
courts for boys and girls. Before he can turn his attention to athletic 
skills, he must deal with nutrition.

"Right now, I need food -- I need to increase the quality of the kids' food," 
Duval said. "You can see [the children are] very small.

"They've already accumulated calorific deficiencies. I need to offer balanced 
meals. I only give some carbohydrates and some meat now, some protein. But we 
need to have iron, vegetables and stuff.

"That takes money, and that takes organization."

The scion of a prominent Haitian automotive family and a former soccer star 
who led Montreal's Loyola University to a championship in the early 1970s, 
Duval returned to his country after graduation and became a leading opponent 
of the Duvalier dictatorship. At one point, he served a 17-month sentence in 
Fort Dimanche but emerged even more invigorated and authored a book on the 
prison.

By 1996, though, Duval found himself tiring of the seemingly endless debate 
over the nature of Haitian democracy and wanted to devote himself to 
something more "concrete." Using his family connections, he persuaded the 
owners of the compound to let him open a sports camp.

The idea would be not only to help the poor, but also to bridge the chasm 
between the impoverished and the tiny upper classes. This would be done by 
having children play together, and play well, on competing teams.

Children having supportive parents is the only requirement. Each child is 
given a physical examination, tutoring and educational support, a luxury in a 
country in which only half the population makes it past the fifth grade.

Despite some support from the United States, the vast majority of the 
equipment, energy and money that pays for the organization's $15,000 monthly 
budget comes from friends and businesses within Haiti.

The only drawback is that the club must be somewhat selective, taking only as 
many children as it can afford on a largely first-come, first-serve basis. 
Otherwise, it could not handle the demand -- half of the country's population 
is younger than 20 and many of them live in the vast slums ringing 
Port-au-Prince.

"We wouldn't have enough space. You'd probably see 1 million kids here 
overnight," said Felix Biguesnel, 29, who has worked at the sports 
organization since its inception. "We have to be restrictive."

The organization has sponsored two teenagers who traveled to Paris for 
tryouts on soccer clubs. Biguesnel said Haiti's formidable class divisions 
make it difficult for even the most talented youngsters to get the training 
they need.

That's not evident to many of the youngest, who speak in awe of the sports 
organization's seeming riches once they're inside the grounds. There are 
clean basketball courts, lots of soccer balls and even a bin full of used 
cleats.

Wearing a tattered yellow City of Boca Raton T-shirt and a nervous grin, 
Pierre Samson, 10, is listening to a coach explain how to dribble a soccer 
ball.

It's his first day inside the compound, which he has observed at times 
traveling from the Delmas section of Port-au-Prince. A friend has brought him 
today, and Pierre is in the process of getting a medical exam and his first 
meal there, a lunchtime treat of rice and juice.

"I want to be a sports star when I grow up, or maybe a [bus] driver," he 
said, naming two of the more lucrative professions visible to many Haitian 
youngsters. "It's a bit strange here, but I like it so far."

Despite his connections and reputation -- in addition to his political 
activism, Duval was a star on Haiti's popular Violette soccer team -- he has 
been attacked from all sides during the past four years. The poor parents of 
the children he serves have been suspicious of a mulatto elite giving local 
children food, medicine and education. The middle-class owners of private 
schools and sports clubs resent having to play against his teams because of 
the competition, Duval said, and even his reform-minded rich friends wonder 
why he's spending so much money on poor kids.

"Any day I can be thrown out," Duval said. "I went to the owners and asked if 
I can use this land. They said yes, go ahead. But they want to maintain the 
option to sell at any time. There's a lot of money being spent here, but 
these are the basic things I need to operate.

"What I hope is that the owners will have a change of heart one day, that 
they will come and say, man, it's kind of crazy, but let him do his thing."

He sees this as a logical extension of his work as a political activist, when 
the struggle was for self-determination. Older now, and the father of a 
teenage son, he's more interested in what he calls "the concrete, not the 
abstract."

"For 20 years, being an advocate of human rights ... I wanted to do something 
that I could [put] my hands on, really," Duval said.

"When you're an advocate, it does have an effect. Had we not done what we did 
... to advance the social movement, I probably couldn't have the political 
space now, this real space, to do what I'm doing today."

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