An Update from SAKALA

News for a Better World from the SAKALA community center in Cité Soleil, Haiti

I am sure many of you are following the news from Haiti, which has been particularly dire in the last month, as armed groups have stepped up attacks in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, in an attempt to overthrow the government.

SAKALA is located in Cité Soleil, a marginalized and poverty-stricken area adjacent to Port-au-Prince. It has been in the crosshairs of such violence not just for the last month, but really for decades.

SAKALA has a WhatsApp staff group to share communications, photos, and videos of what is going on there – you have seen many of these on SAKALA’s Facebook page.

For several days early this month, that communications group went silent. I became increasingly worried that no news was bad news.

Then, the photos and videos started coming. Like this, from SAKALA’s athletic field:

And this, planting seeds in SAKALA’s community garden.

And this, from SAKALA’s library. She is studying even though schools have been closed for weeks.

I know things are terrible there. I am reading the same news as everyone else, feeling helpless. But among the SAKALA staff WhatsApp chat topics was a debate over whether it was professional to release photos that had fun SnapChat filters on them.

The answer they came up with was no.

That this rather mundane photo editing debate was generated by people who are living in a war zone, undeclared war, but war nonetheless, was another source of hope for me, looking on from afar.

It was not surprising — I have seen countless times, first hand, how the SAKALA staff and the children somehow transform seemingly impossible conditions into something beautiful.

So, life goes on at SAKALA, even now. That is my basic update.

The truth is the “even now” times, a phrase usually used to denote an exceptionally bad but temporary circumstance, have been the norm for quite some time in Haiti.

In this video from 2019, when SAKALA’s leader, Daniel Tillias, was named a CNN Hero, the conditions on the streets of Port-au-Prince look hopelessly bad. We now think of that time as relatively peaceful.

Indeed, when SAKALA was founded in 2006 by people who grew up in the neighborhoods there to give the next generations of children peaceful alternatives to joining gangs, Daniel remembers that bombing Cité Soleil out of existence was posed as a solution in the chatter on Haitian talk radio by the powers that be.

Instead, SAKALA began with a soccer ball as a quiet answer to the bomb threat.

The short game was to have the youths play soccer (football to the world outside my native US) together.

 It was not just a chance for the kids to have fun – though, honestly, to me, an incorrigible softie, that would be enough – but a pretext to get them a meal after practice.

The longer game was that soccer was the children’s gateway to school, to education, and from there onto their dreams of becoming doctors, engineers, artists, lawyers, agronomists – wherever their cherished talents and hard work could take them in the better world that they deserved and that welcomed them.

We are, all of us here, still working on that better world for them. Especially even now.

I think my favorite of all the pictures I have seen from SAKALA in recent days is this one from its chess program.

See the hint of a smile as he makes his move.

He is winning.

Thank you for your continued great solidarity and kindness to SAKALA.

Wishing you much peace, happiness, and health.