23988: (news) Slavin: Sixers' Dalembert Is Keeping Haiti Near to His Heart (NYTimes 122604) (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

from: jps390@aol.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/26/sports/basketball/26afar.html?oref=login

December 26, 2004
FACES FROM AFAR

Sixers' Dalembert Is Keeping Haiti Near to His Heart

By LIZ ROBBINS

Light danced in Samuel Dalembert's eyes, his smile eclipsing a childhood marked by darkness.

One night this fall, as he began his fourth season in the N.B.A. with the Philadelphia 76ers, Dalembert recalled his childhood in Haiti, the poor island nation besieged recently by violence.

He would awake at 5 a.m. to study by a dim bulb and iron a week's worth of Catholic school uniforms in the allotted hour of electricity, never knowing exactly when the darkness would return.

At school, a different kind of blackout was routine. "At one o'clock in the afternoon, not only were you hungry, you were hot, there was no air-conditioning in the school," he said. Children were used to fainting.

They would walk to school for 45 minutes before dawn, he recalled, trying to ignore the dead bodies on the side of the road.

"It's such a shame; it's such a great country and it's going down, down," Dalembert said softly. There is sadness, but deep affection and passion in his voice. Now 23, he told how his grandmother helped him leave to join his mother in Montreal at age 14. His grandmother remained in Haiti.

As he sat with representatives from Unicef at a Midtown restaurant to learn about programs to which he could contribute, Dalembert ate grilled fish and told them how he was lucky to have one meal a day growing up.

"Look at me, I'm living in this beautiful place," Dalembert said. "I'm blessed to be doing this. But part of me said, 'You can help; you can do more.'

"Feeding - that's the most important thing," Dalembert added, then told the Unicef representatives that sponsoring education was his second goal.

Dalembert has donated $42,500 to the Red Cross and Unicef for relief efforts in Haiti, including $20,000 in October (which the N.B.A. matched) after Hurricane Jeanne.

Since September, political and gang violence has claimed more than 173 lives, which disturbs Dalembert. "We are destroying each other, becoming like a cannibal," he said. "We need each other to survive."

Dalembert said that he and his younger sister, Melissa, who is a junior in high school in Miami, were fortunate. He said that he had tried to get his grandmother Hippomene to visit. When she was applying for a visa recently, she was turned away by a shooting at the United States Embassy.

On Christmas, Dalembert spent the holiday with his girlfriend's family in New Jersey. He met Jaime Conneely while playing basketball at Seton Hall, after his two seasons at St. Patrick's High School in Elizabeth, N.J. He did not play organized basketball until his second year in Canada, and his high school in Montreal did not have a basketball program.

In Haiti, Dalembert said: "Only one kid on the block had a basketball, and it had a hole in it. We'd pump it up and overpump it."

With the 76ers this season, he has been inconsistent, struggling in Coach Jim O'Brien's defensive scheme. He went from third-string center to starter seven games ago, and the Sixers have gone 5-2 during that time.

Teams throughout the league have been inquiring about the 6-foot-11 Dalembert, and it is possible the Sixers would deal him rather than lose him to free agency this summer.

"All you can do is keep working," Dalembert said Friday. "At some point, if somebody doesn't want you, you're going to have people appreciate you in some other places."

In his homeland, they do.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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J.P. Slavin
New York
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