Part of doing the roundup every morning is getting to read the different things beat writers note. Two months ago, the St. Petersburg Times’ Greg Auman did what I thought was a cool story on the proliferation of players with a Haitian heritage at South Florida. The Times took that fabulous picture, to the right, and Sabbath Joseph’s spirited pride came through clear in Greg’s story.
This past weekend, as I watched Jonathan Vilma and Jacques Cesaire’s PSA asking for relief funds, I of course thought back to the Bulls. With students back on campus yesterday, South Florida’s administration generously put me in touch with a few of these young men whose families hail from Haiti. Take a read:
Every spring, Sabbath Joseph scans South Florida’s recruit list for Haitian names.
When Mistral Raymond came in from Iowa, Joseph cornered him in the Bulls’ locker room, welcomed him as a zoe (read: Haitian) and carried out an ersatz knighting.
Joseph tosses out Creole on the Bulls’ game field and he regularly harasses his teammates of less distinct bloodlines, “You’d run faster if you were Haitian.” He talks a mean game of nationalistic pride and redshirt freshman Jon Lejiste always thought it was a trip. Until this week.
When it became a saving grace.
“It’s all our parents’ homeland,” Lejiste said. “We always joke about our own little Haitian circle, but now, we really see how close-knit we are.”
The Bulls returned to class and football Tuesday, exactly one week after a magnitude-7 earthquake decimated Haiti. In a country of just nine million people, the latest numbers estimate 200,000 are dead, 1.5 million homeless and 3 million without adequate food or water. And there’s the thousands still unaccounted for, people like several of the Bulls’ extended family members.
South Florida counted 12 players of Haitian descent on its roster this past fall. No one was born in Haiti, but all had at least one parent who was or, like Joseph and Lejiste, both. Lejiste said his parents have connected with his whole family. Mistral said he still hasn’t spoken to his grandmother – “When I call, it’s just a silence, no dial tone or anything,” he said – but his cousin has. Someone finally got a hold of one of his father’s brothers two days ago and a family friend claims to have seen one last missing cousin.
Joseph’s family has not been so lucky, and as much of his father’s side still remains unheard-from, he quietly said, “My father is a very strong man. I think it’s easy to break right now, but he has a very strong faith.”
It’s a faith he and his Haitian teammates share, the junior linebacker said, in a way he never thought of before. Amidst all the joking about their special community within the Bulls, he said he’s partly only now realizing the ties that bind them.
“Being a Haitian is something we take pride in,” Joseph said. “People from Haiti come with little, work hard and always have faith. The kids, we always try to please our parents and try to (honor) our heritage. When we play football, we try to play for the whole nation of Haiti.”
Even before last week’s earthquake, the South Florida players were well aware of the nation’s poverty. The average Haitian lives on $2 a day and the average life span is just 44. Mistral and Joseph both said they haven’t visited the country since they were toddlers, but even if they could remember, it wouldn’t be what they see on their televisions now.
The wreckage is everywhere, the devastation complete. Haiti’s main port is still unusable and the airport is continuously clogged. The Presidential Palace, main government buildings and United Nations’ peacekeeping headquarters have all been destroyed. Many of the government employees and trained emergency personnel have been killed and chaos is beginning to rear in a country that never even had its own military.
“I’ve got CNN on constantly,” Mistral said, minutes before Joseph admitted he can’t watch the news, or read the internet reports, any more.
“It’s just too hard for me,” he said. “As much as we hear about the help now, it’s going to take years to rebuild Haiti.”
The Bulls are undergoing a little program rebuilding of their own right now, since last week’s firing of Jim Leavitt – the only coach South Florida has had – and the hiring of Skip Holtz. The impact of that, Raymond said, is that “there’s been so much going on, we haven’t really had a chance to talk about what we’d like to do (for Haiti).”
It will definitely be something, though, the junior safety said. He and Joseph have talked about raising money, and of the help that will still be needed by the time their season rolls around again. Until then, if it’s even possible with Joseph’s constant reminding, there is a heightened pride now.
Mistral said every time he hears a news anchor talk about the spirit of the people of Haiti, he thinks, “That’s us.”
“It’s the way we’re constructed,” he said. “Your spirit is your foundation, and that spirit is always joyous.”
It’s why, after 10 minutes of somber talk, Lejiste could joke about super defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul commandeering “The Haitian Sensation,” as his nickname, laughingly saying, “I wanted the title, but he took it.” Reminded that with Pierre-Paul off to the NFL, he could indeed grab it this coming spring, Lejiste more soberly said no, there’s no easy transference of that mantel. Not on a team like this, with this many Haitians.
And at a time like this, he wouldn’t want it any other way.
Aditi Kinkhabwala has written a regular column for SI.com and been published in Sports Illustrated.