We spent Monday thru Friday of this week visiting a school of about 60 children. The school is nestled half way up a mountain beside a flowing river where people from the community bathe and do their laundry and it also supplies their drinking water. We gave this school 4 new water filters which will purify a liter a minute of that river water. We spend our days teaching about the importance of clean water, washing our hands, explaining to them why we built them latrines (before the latrines were built most people went where ever they were whenever they felt the urge!) Nutrition, Cholera, SIDA (AIDS), etc. it can get a little heavy! So we deemed Friday Fun Day! And after several of the students accepted Christ we decided to celebrate with a lil game of FUTBOL. Haitians LOVE soccer!
If this particular tourney had a name I'm pretty sure it would have been The Dust Bowl, as 60 students took the field in a mad frenzy dust flew, kids were trampled, and within 30 seconds the ball was in the river! Eventually however, the younger kids and probably some of the smarter kids went inside to the shade (why did no one tell me that it's ALWAYS 110 degrees in this country?!?) where more than half the interns were playing guitar and swapping English lessons for Creole ones! Eventually, we even broke them into teams (it just seemed like the right thing to do!), the boys all ran to Richard and the girls all ran to me so boys against girls it was! Then it was on like donkey kong!
Did the ball ever end up in the river again? Why yes, yes it did! How did we get it out? Well, funny thing is before I could even jog over to the bank to locate the ball, some lil guy would have already stripped down to his birthday suit jumped in and thrown the wet ball onto our "field" and the game would commence!
Richard and I played goalies and to be honest it was likely the safest position as this particular game of soccer resembled what I imagine MMA / UFC soccer tourneys to look like, the rules were, there are no rules!!!
I shouted in English to my Creole team and they shouted back in Creole as if we full well knew exactly what the other was saying! The boys scored a "few" times....you wouldn't think a barefoot could send a ball flying into your gut so hard the wind gets knocked out of you, but I'm here to tell you it CAN!
You also wouldn't think that lil girls in lil yellow dresses could score on boys with big feet so many times, but we sure did and no worries I taught them how to celebrate humbly! If running a circle around the filed screaming with our hands in the air every time is humble!
I seriously think it may have been the most fun game of soccer I have ever played!!!
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