SAKALA chess champion competes in Chess Olympiad in India

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

Merisena Cadeau’s last name means “gift” in French.

She lives up to it in so many ways, but for now we will focus on Merisena’s gift for chess as she heads to India to compete in the Chess Olympiad, representing her country, her hometown of Cité Soleil, and, of course, SAKALA, on the Haitian national team.

First, there was a stop in Paris for a few days of last-minute practice before competing in the big tournament.

Here is Merisena, 16, playing against chess aces in a park in Paris. That day she won three of the four games she played — and with a first-ever experience of jet lag, no less.

The international locale is different, but really Merisena has been practicing every day for years now. I am tempted to call her story a miracle, but the first thing to know about Merisena is that she earned this opportunity.

Here is Merisena in Paris, looking like a movie star to me, which is fitting since her story feels like a movie where the hero overcomes all odds.

But when I think of Merisena I think first of this little girl, winning an award for scholastic achievement in 2017.

She walked up shyly to the table to get her award, but when she turned around her face couldn’t contain her joy and pride, her smile like a sunburst.

I don’t think I knew her name when I took this photo, but I already knew then Merisena was a gift. I already knew that smile.

I remember seeing her around SAKALA. She had a special grace even then, but she was also one of the quiet kids who did not call attention to herself. So, whenever I saw her I made a point of catching her eye and smiling and getting rewarded with that big smile back.

Merisena’s debut for the world beyond SAKALA and Cité Soleil came not for success in chess, but for when she was interviewed in this CNN video made when SAKALA’s leader and co-founder, Daniel Tillias, was named a CNN Hero in 2019.

Again you will see Merisena’s big smile as she talked about her dream of a better life by becoming a nurse to help the sick.

Also, she dreamed “for Haiti to not be the same way it is today.”

When she said that in 2019, the conditions were already crazy difficult in Haiti, a place where life is too-often defined by seemingly insurmountable challenges and injustices, nowhere more so than Cité Soleil, where SAKALA is located.

In 2019, it was toward the beginning of the period Haiti is in now, where political violence and kidnappings have reached epidemic proportions and economic insecurity has plunged the country even deeper into poverty.

Around the time she said that in 2019, Merisena and all the SAKALA kids lived near this drainage canal that looked like this.

It looks worse now – or did in February when I was there last, trash piled upon trash, the layers melting into each other in the heat. I would have stopped to take a picture but it was no longer safe to do so because of the growing violence in the neighborhoods.

But just over the wall from that canal is SAKALA’s garden -- itself built on an unofficial dump, using recycled truck tires as gardening containers.

A turning of something ugly and spirit-crushing into a place of beauty and hope, an inspiration for the world.

The children of SAKALA, the children of Cité Soleil, have a knack for doing that.

You can get a glimpse of the garden here (Haiti’s largest urban garden, it’s too big to see in one picture) in SAKALA’s outdoor classroom. This picture is not of an actual academic class, but of who I call my “Tom and Jerry” kids. They managed to find ways for everybody to share my phone to watch cartoons in a masterclass that was part game of Twister and part Nobel Peace-level negotiations.

That garden has grown trees and vegetables and flowers and happy children who would go onto to become chess champions. Some, like Merisena, are champions of official tournaments – but they are all champions in their own right as they discovered a game they loved.

One of the many beautiful things about SAKALA to me in these last several years was seeing kids just playing chess every chance they got, just for fun.

The big kid in the picture below is SAKALA leader Daniel Tillias.

I remember, with some sheepishness, being a doubter in the beginning, trying to talk “reason” to Daniel when he suggested on a Tuesday in 2017 that they should send some of SAKALA’s kids to play in a big chess tournament in Port-au-Prince just a few days later that Saturday — even though none had played a single game and we did not have a single chess board yet.

Impossible, I said. There’s no way. That’s too fast.

Then, a few days later, after some hasty chess board purchases and training sessions consisting of YouTube videos, SAKALA sent its first team ever to a chess tournament. I think one of the kids may have won a game – but even if not, it was a triumph.

Here is Daniel with Merisena and another of SAKALA’s chess champions, Geralson Simon, after they won their divisions in a prestigious chess tournament in Port-au-Prince in January 2021. If you look closely, you might be able to see Daniel saying to me, “I told you so.” :)

A major reason that I was happily proven wrong was Coach Leslie Killick, who came to SAKALA as a volunteer volleyball coach around the same time the chess program was started and so he took on that (and many other things) too. Here he is with Merisena celebrating the big victory at the tournament in January 2021.

This photo below of Merisena is from a tournament in January 2019. I think it was her first tournament playing outside of SAKALA. She did not win. She did not make the finals.

In the beginning, every match she played she was the underdog, playing against much more experienced opponents. In the beginning, there were no gold medals or victory celebrations.

But a year after that January 2019 tournament photo, Merisena had improved enough to qualify as a member of the national team representing Haiti at an international tournament in Russia in the summer of 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic and world events scuttled that plan, but still Merisena practiced every day and got better and better.

Merisena is clearly extraordinary by any measure, but to me she is also a typical SAKALA kid, a typical Cité Soleil kid.

When going through my photos looking for early chess shots of Merisena for this newsletter, I found so many big smiles and displays of the talent, humor, kindness and strength of SAKALA’s kids. Just so much potential.

The next leaders of Haiti and the world, if we let them be – and if we did, we’d be in good hands.

But for now let’s cheer on Merisena as she, Coach Killick and the Haitian national team head to India for the Chess Olympiad. She is in center of the photo here, draped in the Haitian flag, surrounded by her friends from SAKALA who came to the airport in Port-au-Prince to wish her bon chans (good luck in Haitian Creole).

Thank you for your wonderful solidarity and support that has made all of this possible.

Wishing you much health, happiness, and peace.