A boy’s legs stick out from the storm drain at the edge of a Port-au-Prince road, visible only from the knees down — the rest of him is submerged. A friend holds his ankles so he doesn’t fall further in. Still, he slides a little more, a little more, a little more. Now, only his ankles are peeking out of the gutter.

Youths play soccer on the streets of Port-au-Prince as a diversion from the realities in the quake-devastated capital. (photo by Ian Lovett)

A soccer ball slips out from the storm drain. The dozen boys gathered around all cheer. They help pull the submerged boy from the gutter. Then the game resumes.

The daily afternoon rainstorm in Haiti has just begun, hurling torrents of water, the likes of which are unknown in Los Angeles, onto the boys’ soccer game. The rain doesn’t deter them, though. Nor does the thunder or the lightning, the uneven slope of the pavement, the walls topped with barbed wire on either side of the street, or the temporary loss of the ball into a gutter.

Since the earthquake that tore the city to pieces in January, life in Haiti’s capital has been pushed into the streets. Tent encampments, full of people who lost their homes, block traffic; vendors line both sides of major causeways, selling mangoes and breadfruit, Digicel phone cards, plastic bags of water, charcoal — anything.

And, for the past three weeks, since the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa, enthusiasm for the “world’s game” has coalesced in the crowded Port-au-Prince streets. People gather under tents, crowding around small, fuzzy TVs to watch Argentina play, and congregate at Sylvio Cator Stadium to cheer on Brazil. The din of vuvuzelas — the plastic horns that have provided the tournament’s soundtrack — echoes over walls into the road. And when the World Cup matches are over for the day, people gather on those same roads to play their own games.

“We have nowhere else to go,” says Josef Baptiste, a 20-year-old Port-au-Prince local. “I used to play on a club team, but now the field has been turned into a camp, so we can’t play there anymore. The street is the only place where we can play.”

I’m just watching them play, same as the man perched at the edge of the wall inside the Medicins du Monde complex who peers over the razor wire. The tallest boy sees me watching and approaches. He says something in Creole.

“Je ne parle creole,” I say. I don’t speak Creole. “Je parle francais un petit peu.”

He says something else. I shrug. Then he waves for me to come forward. He makes a kicking motion. He points to my foot. He wants me to play.

Everything is in play — the curb; the sidewalk; the rapidly-growing, pond-like puddles; the parked cars at one end of the street; the still-standing walls: everything. The boys are anywhere from 12 to 20 years old. They crash into the walls, slide on the pavement, chase the ball through the streams at the edge of the street, showing no regard whatever for their physical safety. Only when a car comes, beeping its horn, do they stop. “Time out,” they call in English. And when it’s past, before the smell of exhaust has even cleared, they are sprinting through puddles again.

I plant myself decidedly in the middle of the road, determined not to cross the gutter-rivers that separate the street from the sidewalk, storm drains, rubble piles, and razor wire. I am a decade older than most of them, and can too easily envision myself careening into a storm drain and breaking a leg.

Still, despite my hesitancy, my teammates are eager to involve me in the game, playing me the ball at every opportunity. Each time I receive the ball and play it to a teammate, a short young man in a black Nike shirt gives me a thumbs up, smiling at me and nodding his head, encouraging.

The ball comes to the tallest boy, a lanky guy the others refer to as “Tshabalala”, after the South African striker who scored the first and perhaps best goal of the World Cup. He receives the ball on the left side, at the edge of the sidewalk, with the inside of his right foot. As a defender approaches, he opens his hips towards the middle of the field, then swivels, sliding the ball between his opponent’s legs; he takes another touch, then strikes the ball with his left foot past the keeper, between the stones serving as goal posts.

Tshabalala wheels away in celebration, hands over his head, a smile so big it shows every last one of his teeth.

The other team immediately starts shouting at him in Creole. I have no idea what they’re saying, of course. And yet, I know exactly what they’re saying. They’re saying the shot was too high.

It’s a universal argument. Goal, no goal. Foul, no foul. These shouting matches can be found in street games with makeshift goals all over the world. And though I might not speak much Creole, I speak fluent soccer.

Even when the argument dies down, the pitch remains a raucous place. The rain pelts into the pavement. The puddles swell. The boys continue to yell at each other, demanding the ball, instructing teammates, castigating bad touches and misread passes. They chase the ball up onto the sidewalk, crash into the walls, tussle in puddles, flip the ball over opponents’ heads, and fire shots towards the goal. And all the while, as they tromp through rubble that might have killed their friends and relatives, they smile.

Several days after we met playing soccer, a translator and I visit Macarte Casuis — my teammate with the black shirt — at his home.

“We used to play soccer on this street,” Macarte says. He gestures down at the rubble that now blocks half of the road. Everything on the west side of the street has completely collapsed, though some of the homes on the east side remain intact.

Macarte’s house has been marked with a yellow stamp, meaning it is still inhabitable but needs work. Buildings stamped red endured major structural damage, and are not safe to enter. Green-stamped buildings have been deemed structurally sound, but many people will not return even to those, preferring to join one of the tent camps scattered across the city, where they can sleep without fear of a roof collapsing.

At 20 years old, Macarte has lost most of his immediate family — his father, his mother, and his brother all died in the earthquake, not to mention many of his friends. His school has closed down, and he won’t resume classes until the fall.

“It’s very sad,” Macarte says. “I lost so many people.”

“You looked so happy the other day while we were playing,” I say.

“When I’m playing, I leave all the sadness at the corner of the field,” he says. “I can forget about everything else. And that was the first time a foreigner had ever played with us. We were very happy to have you playing with us.”

As the game goes on, and the rain subsides, I get drawn further and further from the safety of the middle of the street. I chase the ball up onto the sidewalk, lifting it out of a puddle and vollying to a teammate. I tussle for possession up against the cement wall of the Medicins-du-Monde compound. Once, after I lose possession, I even slide on the pavement to make a tackle. And when my team is scored on, I join in the protests, shouting in English that the shot was too high, though I knew no one could understand me. That is, I forget about concerns for my own safety, and began to enjoy the game.

Clege Evans, the boy who went into the storm drain to get the ball, says he’s also afraid for his safety sometimes when he’s playing in the street. But it’s still his favorite place to play soccer.

“There are so many obstacles in the road, especially after the earthquake,” Evans says. “It’s easy to hurt yourself. But what else can we do? I play on a club team, on a field. But there, everyone has a position. Here, we’re free to go anywhere, and play however we like. We can just play to enjoy.”

So much of what you now find on Port-au-Prince streets is heartbreak personified—children who grab onto the backs of cars at intersections, holding on even as the vehicles start to move, risking their lives in the pursuit of maybe 30 cents; or the workmen who hack away with lone trowels at piles of cement that once made up three-story buildings, a sysyphean task rewarded with lungfulls of dust. Officials at the United Nations say that even now, six months after the quake, every time they remove rubble, they find another body. And the rubble won’t be cleared away for years.

In these same streets, however, you also find a kind of social effervescence that is exceedingly rare in the United States. Champs Mars, the city square at the epicenter of Port-au-Prince’s annual Carnival, has become a tent camp, where thousands who lost their homes now sleep. After the earthquake, this year’s Carnival was cancelled. But at night now, along Champs Mars, hundreds of vendors sell grilled chicken and beer. During the day, they watch the World Cup on a big screen that has been set up in the square. Young boys play their own games, emulating World Cup heroes. Along with the rubble, beds, commerce and grief, pride, dreams, and even joy have also moved out into the public street.

Editor’s note: Staff Writer Ian Lovett visited Haiti last week, where he conducted interviews and generated the information for this article.