NEW BRAUNFELS, Texas (AP) -- After the Haitian national soccer team couldn't eat another bite of chef-prepared pork or ice cream, and before going back to its cabins at a Texas resort, coach Jairo Rios asked for a favor.
Tents. As many as they could haul back to Haiti.
"I eat well here. I sleep well," forward Charles Herold Jr. said in French, speaking through a translator. "But I cannot help but think of my friends and family who don't have that. I can't get that off my mind."
Unable to practice in Port-au-Prince since the Jan. 12 earthquake that killed as many as 250,000 people, the Haitian team is staying in Texas until its May 5 game against Argentina. Players say a victory is badly needed to boost their country's spirits, even though they are heavy underdogs against one of the top teams in the world.
The Texas trip was organized by the nonprofit group San Antonio Sports, which is providing the training getaway for the devastated Haitian soccer federation. Players who've slept in the streets for the past three months have been feted with brisket and trips to shopping malls.
Players are already wrestling with the guilt of their relatively better fortunes. Forward Eliphene Cadet, 29, escaped from his house in Port-au-Prince after the roof caved on him and two children.
Leaving Haiti meant leaving his family in a tent in a field, near where his house once stood. Other players left their families in similar conditions.
"All the guys talk about it," Cadet said. "I know that they're here. There are still tremors now. That's our biggest worry."
The Haitian team has actually emerged from the earthquake luckier than some. All members of the national team survived, including those whose houses crumbled on top of them.
But 32 bodies were pulled from the rubble of the soccer federation's three-story headquarters, including coaches and top officials. Yves Jean-Bart, president of the soccer federation, was among only a few who escaped alive.
Some homeless families are still encamped at the national soccer stadium, and fields elsewhere remain blanketed by a canopy of makeshift tents and tarps. Robert Jean-Bart, the son of Haiti's soccer federation president and who lives in Boston, said there is virtually nowhere in the country to play soccer.
Jean-Bart said it was only last weekend that families began moving off the playing field in the stadium. He said the federation is trying to schedule a game in Port-au-Prince as early as August, but it will depend on how quickly the turf can be repaired.
Even before the quake, Haiti did not qualify for the World Cup. The international soccer federation FIFA ranks Haiti No. 91 in the world -- behind Iceland but above Gambia -- and the country's national team has not played an official game in nearly a year.
But players said facing Argentina -- ranked No. 9 -- will be as important to Haiti as a World Cup match.
"In Haiti, people say ask when we're going to play Argentina. People think you're going to do something good for the country," said defender Peter Germain. "If we win against Argentina, the people are finally going to be happy. We can do something positive for this country."
Nerves from the earthquake remain raw. On the bumpy flight last week to San Antonio, a bout of turbulence had Haitian players pressing their fingernails into the armrests.
"Even when the plane rumbles, it make them nervous," said Jean Roland Dartiguenave, an assistant coach whose cell phone store in Haiti was destroyed. "It reminds them of the tremors."
CTV.ca News Staff
Date: Sat. Apr. 17 2010 4:33 PM ET
The commander of a Canadian military destroyer that was dispatched to Haiti in the wake of the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake says a shortage of livable homes is the biggest hurdle facing Haitians desperate to overcome the disaster.
Sailors aboard HMCS Athabaskan returned to Canada in March, after providing medical care and water, and rebuilding orphanages. They were based in the town of Leogane. About 90 per cent of the homes and businesses there were destroyed by the quake.
"Shelter now for the remainder of the population is going to be one of the key issues, I think, so they can start helping themselves," Peter Crain, the ship's commander, told CTV News Channel on Saturday. "They're into the rainy season now."
HMCS Athabaskan, one of two Canadian military vessels dispatched to Haiti, arrived in the devastated country seven days after the magnitude-7.0 tremor that killed about 200,000 people.
Its crew was tasked with providing light engineering help, humanitarian aid and medical assistance.
"The first thing I noticed was the absolute devastation. The area we were working in was very close to the epicentre, and I was seeing 90 per cent of the homes and businesses were destroyed there," Crain recalled.
The second thing he noticed was a young girl who had been injured.
"She was going to have her hand removed because it was crushed in the earthquake," Crain said. "And she stood there, not a tear in her eye."
"That really epitomized the Haitian people that I saw there. How strong, how resilient they were in the face of this disaster."
After the quake, an unprecedented effort began to load supplies and prepare the crews of HMCS Athabaskan and HMCS Halifax in just a few days.
The 225 crew members on HMCS Halifax, which returned home on March 2 after a six week deployment, focused on the town of Jacmel. HMCS Athabaskan and its crew of 240 returned to Canada on March 17.
"We were sort of the fire department," Crain said. "We arrived and we helped get the country back on its feet" after municipal and federal governments there, and some of the large NGOs, were hobbled by the disaster.
"We were in an area that didn't have a lot of help after the earthquake -- and they needed us."
