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On the flight from Miami, a number of us were wondering why the CFU decided to allow Haiti to host the Olympic second round qualifying group.
We thought they were not ready and was not able to pull it off, even one of the Haitian officials told us she had started making plans to travel to Jamaica while some thought the Bahamas would host or even the US.
We were for the most parts surprised at what we saw in Haiti, things will not be ideal any time soon but it is now closer to normal than we expected.
In the past UN troops would escort all foreign teams, even on walkabouts to the supermarkets etc, this time they had no need to shadow us, and left that to the local national police to escort us to and from training and games.
Interestingly while the locals had respect/fear for the police on the bikes (death squad?), they mostly ignored those in the cars even with the siren blaring and lights flashing.
While we can never fully learn some one's socio-economics, politics etc in less than a week, we had a great laission officer and a few others and it appears the Haitian middle class which was an oxy-moron for so many years is coming back.
On the way to and from Port Au Prince we travelled with many seemingly 'ordinary' Haitians and encountered many on our trips out of the hotel.
Our hotel also hosted several seminars and we saw and spoke to a few 'working classed' Haitians.
Ofcourse we saw signs of abject poverty (in the US and here as well) and we also saw prosperity- lots of new SUVs, massive stone cut walls protecting mansions in he hills and well dressed haitians in well fitting designer clothes.
Ofcourse no tour of a foreign country by a sports team will run smoothly but the little hitches we encountered was more gamesmanship than diplomatic... like when the Jamaican team returned to the locker rooms after warming up for the Bahamas game and saw no water as FIFA stipulates.
Or when we had to do our own laundry but they did point out in the rules that this was our responsibility even when we had it done every where else and does it for every team that comes here.
We were not amused when the nice bus we had the first two days with the tape deck where the driver loves to play his two Bob Marley tapes singing every word even though his English was very limited to about five words, was changed for one that was smaller, A/C did not work all the time and no tape deck.
Three logos stood out for all of us, the UN is every where-litterally you cant miss them, either the peace keeping forces or the diplomats; a busines man named Lesly who has dozens of entities all over the place and Digicel- the official sponsors for the football programme but it seems for the entire country as well. It was impossible to miss Digicel on shirts, caps, walls- every where.
ANS Oh the women there are beautiful, I was surprised as how beautiful these women are.
I guess we bought into the stereo-type or tuff ugly women but we were pleasantly surprised at the quality we saw.
The vast majority has great butts, we guessed they walked so much and especially where our hotel was being so hilly, they developed great Glutes.
We saw all kinds, from nubian goddess to brownings, tall lithe and slim to "short and fat like Red Stripe bottle".
But I guess for me and some of the other more mature members of the delegation, the fact that Haiti has the region and world's highest AIDS rate, going to our bed early and reading or watching the few English channels on TV was the only real option.
We thought they were not ready and was not able to pull it off, even one of the Haitian officials told us she had started making plans to travel to Jamaica while some thought the Bahamas would host or even the US.
We were for the most parts surprised at what we saw in Haiti, things will not be ideal any time soon but it is now closer to normal than we expected.
In the past UN troops would escort all foreign teams, even on walkabouts to the supermarkets etc, this time they had no need to shadow us, and left that to the local national police to escort us to and from training and games.
Interestingly while the locals had respect/fear for the police on the bikes (death squad?), they mostly ignored those in the cars even with the siren blaring and lights flashing.
While we can never fully learn some one's socio-economics, politics etc in less than a week, we had a great laission officer and a few others and it appears the Haitian middle class which was an oxy-moron for so many years is coming back.
On the way to and from Port Au Prince we travelled with many seemingly 'ordinary' Haitians and encountered many on our trips out of the hotel.
Our hotel also hosted several seminars and we saw and spoke to a few 'working classed' Haitians.
Ofcourse we saw signs of abject poverty (in the US and here as well) and we also saw prosperity- lots of new SUVs, massive stone cut walls protecting mansions in he hills and well dressed haitians in well fitting designer clothes.
Ofcourse no tour of a foreign country by a sports team will run smoothly but the little hitches we encountered was more gamesmanship than diplomatic... like when the Jamaican team returned to the locker rooms after warming up for the Bahamas game and saw no water as FIFA stipulates.
Or when we had to do our own laundry but they did point out in the rules that this was our responsibility even when we had it done every where else and does it for every team that comes here.
We were not amused when the nice bus we had the first two days with the tape deck where the driver loves to play his two Bob Marley tapes singing every word even though his English was very limited to about five words, was changed for one that was smaller, A/C did not work all the time and no tape deck.
Three logos stood out for all of us, the UN is every where-litterally you cant miss them, either the peace keeping forces or the diplomats; a busines man named Lesly who has dozens of entities all over the place and Digicel- the official sponsors for the football programme but it seems for the entire country as well. It was impossible to miss Digicel on shirts, caps, walls- every where.
ANS Oh the women there are beautiful, I was surprised as how beautiful these women are.
I guess we bought into the stereo-type or tuff ugly women but we were pleasantly surprised at the quality we saw.
The vast majority has great butts, we guessed they walked so much and especially where our hotel was being so hilly, they developed great Glutes.
We saw all kinds, from nubian goddess to brownings, tall lithe and slim to "short and fat like Red Stripe bottle".
But I guess for me and some of the other more mature members of the delegation, the fact that Haiti has the region and world's highest AIDS rate, going to our bed early and reading or watching the few English channels on TV was the only real option.
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