Blaze in Haiti, Day 6: The Trip Ends and the Partnership Begins

Travis Mushett    Articles    

Members of the Association for Rehabilitation of Disabled Persons SW.

I am currently 36,000 feet above the Caribbean Sea, a few hours from touchdown at New York’s JFK Airport. With the schedule of our Haiti trip stuffed practically to capacity, I found it impossible to include everything in the daily blog posts so let me take this moment to update you on a few goings-on that I have thus far neglected to mention.

After Tuesday’s tour of the SoHaMO camp in Cité Soleil, we visited the Association for Rehabilitation of Disabled Persons SW at a center operated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The LDS center is like a gated oasis in the wreckage of Port-au-Prince. The center’s buildings are not only standing but immaculately maintained, and the outdoor basketball court is as well-kept as any that you’ll find stateside. The staff, led by Ms. Smith Gabelus, was similarly top-notch. Seated in a large circle, members with disabilities asked questions and, just as importantly, shared stories. An 11-year-old girl who lost her right leg in the earthquake shed a few tears as she told us how her school would not allow her to return to class after her injury, and that even if she could return, she was afraid of the taunts of classmates. Jean-Chevalier Sanon of NPC Haiti softly told her, “If you run away from your school, if you run away from your friends, you are running away from yourself.” Together they decided that Mr. Sanon would go with the girl and her family to the school and make sure she got re-enrolled. A young man seated to her right helped to comfort her by telling of his own battle with depression after losing his lower left leg in the quake. He affirmed that while the transition was difficult, he has realized that the loss of a limb is not the loss of his identity.

After dinner that evening, Gwénaël Apollon, the Secretary General of YMCA Haiti, and his wife were kind enough to invite us into their lovely home on a mountainside overlooking Port-au-Prince. Under Mr. Apollon’s leadership, the YMCA has proven a valuable ally of NPC Haiti and the broader disability community. To cite one example, the YMCA furnishes many of the volunteers at the NPC’s Paralympic Sports Days. Though I stayed behind at our flat to type up the day’s blog post, Carol and Duncan report a vibrant and enlightening discussion on the challenges facing Haiti’s youth both before and after the earthquake.

Finally, at the trip’s conclusion BlazeSports America and NPC Haiti formalized their relationship by signing a memorandum of cooperation to reinforce the positive work that had been accomplished this week. This trip may be over, but the joint efforts of our two organizations are just beginning.

Carol and Jean-Chevalier signing the memorandum of cooperation.

My feelings upon leaving Haiti are as strong as they are complicated. Visiting a country with such profound need—where basic necessities like food, potable water, a bed made of something other than chunks of concrete—makes you hyperaware of the seeming decadence of air conditioning, a space foam pillow, or a bottle of organic pomegranate tea. Leaving a land of want for a land of luxury can make you feel embarrassed, even ashamed. But embarrassment and shame won’t put food in the bellies of the people of SoHaMO or provide rehabilitation to Haitians with disabilities. Action will. Of all the emotions this trip stirred in the BlazeSports delegation, the strongest is resolve. We have gathered facts and stories, forged relationships, and witnessed first hand the resilience of the Haitian people. As Mr. Sanon frequently says, “You should never have two meetings. Meet once, then action.” We have met. Now it is time to act.

Blaze in Haiti, Day 5: Secretary of State Dr. Michel Pean Greets BlazeSports America

Travis Mushett    Articles    

Dr. Michel Pean (far left), Haiti’s Secretary of State for Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities, meets with BlazeSports and NPC Haiti.

Dr. Michel Pean, Haiti’s Secretary of State for Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities, and his assistant Gurline graciously met with Carol, Duncan, Mr. Sanon, and me this morning at his office in Pétionville. The warm greeting and insightful discussion covered a broad spectrum of topics including the impact of sport and physical education on young people with disabilities. The conversation quickly evolved into a broader and more comprehensive discussion of rehabilitation. Dr. Pean demonstrated a noteworthy blend of compassion and conceptual knowledge, discussing the multinational medical response teams’ understandable focus on prostheses but without addressing the true interdisciplinary nature of comprehensive rehabilitation for persons with a variety of disabilities. During his tenure as Secretary of State, Dr. Pean has proven to be an eloquent orator and advocate for persons with disabilities and has spoken directly to and with Parlympic athletes and their family members at the extremely successful sporting events hosted by the NPC. Dr. Pean proposed the development of a formal partnership that would utilize the many rehabilitation physicians, therapists, and professionals that make up the BlazeSports America network and the broader Paralympic community, a proposal that holds great promise for the BlazeSports-Haiti partnership.

After the meeting with Dr. Pean, we paid a visit to the NPC Haiti headquarters in downtown Port-au-Prince. Though the building survived the earthquake, it did not escape the ordeal unscathed. The plaster walls bear cracks and missing chunks, and a section of the wall is currently held in place by some ingeniously arranged weightlifting equipment. The staff at the NPC hasn’t let these less than ideal conditions slow them down, however. When we arrived, one young woman was busy entering the demographic data from the displacement camps into a computer, and we all pitched in to load bags of rice into the truck for the SoHaMO camp in Cité Soleil. It was heartening to see the speed with which NPC Haiti manages to react to the needs of its constituents. Just yesterday, members of SoHaMO spoke of their food shortage, and today Mr. Sanon and his NPC staff were able to assist them. It was clear that the camp had no expectation otherwise; rather than react with jubilation or dramatic displays of gratitude, they accepted the rice with the simple dignity of people receiving a shipment. When the NPC makes a promise, the SoHaMO camp has confidence it will be kept.

The NPC staff enters canvassing information from the camps into a computer database.

Looking out of NPC Haiti’s headquarters. The light illuminates damage inflicted by the earthquake.

Meeting with residents of the SoHaMO camp.

Blaze in Haiti, Day 4: The Three-Month Anniversary

Travis Mushett    Articles    

From L to R: Jill Biden, Haitian President Rene Preval, and Michelle Obama today in Port-au-Prince. Photo courtesy of CSM.

This week marks the three month anniversary of the earthquake, and the members of the BlazeSports delegation are not the only Americans who commemorated the occasion in Port-au-Prince. The First and Second Ladies of the United States, Michelle Obama and Jill Biden, paid an unannounced visit to the Haitian capital today, with Ms. Obama delivering a poignant speech to the United Nations staff stationed here. She used the occasion to laud the efforts of the international community and NGOs, but the First Lady reserved her greatest praise for the amazing and continuing display of “Haitians helping Haitians.” We actually had an encounter with the official motorcade as we slalomed down a formerly two-lane road that has been rendered one-lane by rubble piles. Our truck, piloted by the indefatigable Jean-Chevalier Sanon, was heading directly into an oncoming stream of black SUVs with blaring sirens. Spotting us, the entire motorcade hung a right onto a side road to let us through. It seems that not even the Secret Service is willing to take on Mr. Sanon in a game of chicken.

This morning we sat down with the National Paralympic Committee (NPC) of Haiti’s canvassing committee. Mostly made up of young people in their teens and twenties, this team travels tent-to-tent in displacement camps throughout the country in order to collect information on Haitians with disabilities. These volunteers assemble their extensive and sophisticated demographic information with paper and pen, and make frequent follow-up visits to check for migration between camps.

The leader of one the Haitian NPC’s canvassing teams displays some of his findings.

After navigating the gridlock caused by a severe gasoline shortage, we managed to enter Cité Soleil, a neighborhood called “the most dangerous place on earth” by the UN. Cité Soleil’s 300,000 or so residents lack access to electricity, sewers, and police, making it one of the world’s most populous slums. However, facts and figures do no justice to the abjection that the area’s residents face daily, and the pictures I’ve posted below go only a bit further. To understand Cité Soleil, you have to choke on the fumes pumped into its air by cars and smokestacks. You have to feel the anxiety that makes you hide your camera and causes relief groups to conceal food shipments to protect them from the powerful neighborhood gangs. And you have to speak with the residents who face these inhuman conditions with consummate humanity.

An elderly resident of Cité Soleil.

Mr. Sanon introduced us to members of SoHaMO, an NPC partner organization led by and created for people with disabilities and the frail elderly who saw their residential building destroyed in the earthquake. The one-room schoolhouse where we convened our meeting is eerily stuck in the moment of the disaster. The teachers hadn’t gotten around to taking down the homemade Christmas decorations, and the date chalked on the blackboard–the last that school was in session–is January 12, 2010, the day of the earthquake. During the daytime, the members of SoHaMO that are able to work attempt to find odd jobs and scavenge for food to share with the collective, so the people we talked to were among the frailest of the frail. Yet as they shared their stories of loss, devastation, and severe shortage of assistance, it became clear that their brittle bodies belie a toughness of spirit. These people are hurting, they are struggling against obstacles the likes of which few in the First World can conjure even in nightmares, but they have not yet given up hope.

The chalkboard in a Cité Soleil schoolhouse still bears the date “12 Janvier 2010,” the day of the earthquake. There has been no class since.

Carol, Jean-Chevalier, and Duncan listening to stories of SoHaMO members.

Cité Soleil residents at our meeting.

Judging by their living conditions, though, there is no telling how long that hope will be able to sustain itself. After our meeting, the SoHaMO contingent piled into the flatbed of our truck and we all drove to their encampment. They have set up camp in a ruins of a destroyed building. Tents improvised from tablecloths and sticks are pitched on concrete, and the inhabitants sleep on literal rock piles in order to escape nightly flooding. Still, the pride they show in these homes is moving. As I walked through the camp, person after person posed in front of their tent, waiting for me to take their picture. About fifteen minutes after I thought I’d finished this rotation, a little boy signaled for my attention by yelling “Those!” and pointing. Two women had been standing beside their tents, waiting their turn.

Today was easily the toughest day on a tough trip. The need in Cité Soleil is seemingly limitless, but the depth of this challenge is testament to the necessity of addressing it. NPC Haiti is doing what they can for the people of the SoHaMO camp; they help to furnish the camp with water purification materials and food. Let us follow their example, and prod others into doing the same.

On the border of the SoHaMO camp.

A family poses in their tent.

A Cité Soleil “bed.” Residents sleep on rock piles like this to escape nightly flooding.

BlazeSports and NPC Haiti with residents of the SoHaMO camp.

Blaze in Haiti, Day 3: Making Connections

Travis Mushett    Articles    

Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

After yesterday’s trek to Mirebalais, we spent today in and around Port-au-Prince, and while much of the day involved official meetings, the city’s roads ensured that we got our requisite dose of adventure. From what I gather, the streets of Port-au-Prince were always rough. Many of them were and are unpaved and peppered with rocks, people, and goats. The earthquake, of course, only made things worse, carrying big chunks of asphalt down into ravines and rivers and littering rubble piles throughout the city. Whenever Mr. Sanon was able to circumvent traffic enough to pick up some speed on our trip today, the truck bounced around like something out of a theme park in Orlando.

From L to R: Duncan Wyeth, Valiollah Saint-Louis Gilmus, Daniel Pierre Charles, Carol Mushett, and Jean-Chevalier Sanon at the Ministry of Sport.

During a visit to the Ministry of Sport, the Blaze delegation had an excellent meeting with the Director General Daniel Pierre Charles and the Ministry’s National Director of Physical Activities and Sports, Valiollah Saint-Louis Gilmus. Mr. Charles and Ms. Gilmus are amongst the most impressive activists we’ve met in Haiti (or anywhere for that manner). They’ve already established a National Commission for the Restoration of Sport and are on the cutting edge in the pursuit for gender equity in the sporting world. Plans are currently in the works to install a national institute to train coaches and sports administrators, of which the Ministry only has fifty. Mr. Charles stated plainly that he did not want to shunt disabled athletes into a “ghetto within a ghetto”; all coaches trained at the institute will learn to work with competitors both with and without disabilities. The Ministry is currently addressing the needs of Haiti and its athletes through a multi-pronged program that involves creating regional sport training complexes in each of the country’s ten regions, establishing the aforemetioned national institute of sport, and strengthening the capacity of the National Paralympic Committee by providing training and appropriate equipment.

BlazeSports and Mr. Sanon meet with Jean Edouard Baker (far right), the President of the National Olympic Committee (NOC).

We also had the opportunity to meet with Jean Edouard Baker, the President of Haiti’s NOC. Mr. Baker helped to illuminate how the situation is affecting young Haitians. We learned from him that an astonishing 85% of the nation’s schools had been destroyed in the earthquake. In order to address such problems, the NOC will be collaborating with UNICEF to organize athletic programs at 120 of the tent encampments that will serve 60,000 youth, including those with disabilities. To demonstrate the importance of the Olympic and Paralympic movement to the broader society, Mr. Baker has extended an invitation to Jacques Rogge, the President of the International Olympic Committee, to make an appearance at the encampment programs.

Our final stop of the day was at the Handicap International headquarters where we met with Carole Dubrulle, the organization’s country coordinator in Haiti. The earthquake has posed incredible challenges for Handicap International, and we appreciated the chance to share mutual concerns about humanitarian issues with Ms. Dubrulle.

In the morning, we’ll be heading south of the city to visit some of the rural areas most devastated by the quake. From what Mr. Sanon tells us, it’ll be a fascinating and trying day. Look for a report tomorrow night, internet connection permitting.

Blaze in Haiti, Day 2: The Journey Inland

Travis Mushett    Articles    

Ed. Note: Our internet connection has been less than stellar, so last night’s post is going up today. To any of you who were waiting with bated breath, frantically clicking your browser’s reload button to hear the details of BlazeSports’ adventure in Haiti, please accept my apologies.

The sun has set and the goat is eaten, thereby bringing our second day in Haiti to an official close. After a brief visit to a pair of camps in Port-au-Prince to collect video interviews (be sure to check out BlazeSports TV in the coming weeks for some excellent footage), we piled into the truck and drove into the mountains of the Central District.

A practice in the camp before we headed east.

As we followed a curving two-lane highway north and east, the landscape shifted from semiarid to overwhelmingly green. This is the Caribbean as Americans imagine it when we allow our minds to wander away from Sandals Resorts and Carnival Cruises and off into the countryside. Patches of garden are cordoned off by sugarcane fences, corrugated tin is the construction material of choice, and every color seems super-saturated, deeper and brighter and wetter than anything in more northern latitudes. Unfortunately, the sun saw fit to super-saturate my face and neck a brilliant pink. Pinker than pink. And it hurts.

A little girl plays in the mountains between Port-au-Prince and Mirebalais.

Coach Andre Pacombe and a few of his athletes were waiting for us under a tree in the town of Mirebalais. Though they own a small piece of land, they cannot yet afford to build an office and instead schedule their meetings beside this tree. Port-au-Prince may be the most populous city in Haiti but by no means does it claim a monopoly on the nation’s athletic talent. Pacombe’s Association Sportive des Handicapés de Mirebalais is, for example, the reigning national champion in crutch soccer. In addition to members of the soccer squad, we met a number of up and coming athletes with disabilities including the incredibly named Milekson Exile. His surname is, I think, pronounced something close to eks-eel, but what an apt name for a citizen of a nation where forces both economic and natural have pushed so many from their homes.

Milekson Exile with Duncan Wyeth of the BlazeSports Board of Directors.

Today’s meeting was attended by BlazeSports, the NPC of Haiti, and the Association Sportive des Handicapés de Mirebalais.

The turnout at today’s meeting demonstrates the depth with which the Haitian NPC has penetrated the island. Port-au-Prince would be challenge enough for most any organization; two small teams of NPC volunteers must canvass the city’s camps tent-by-tent to gather information on the location, needs, and numbers of people with disabilities, and some of these camps are home to tens of thousands. Milien Chery, the NPC’s Technical Officer and Assistant to its President, shared some of the statistics with us this evening. These stats, more thorough than most demographic projects I’ve seen in the States, were preserved in a spiral notepad, inked carefully in Chery’s own handwriting. Yet despite the challenges posed in the nation’s capital, Jean-Chevalier Sanon insists that he is the President of the National Paralympic Committee of Haiti, not the National Paralympic Committee of Port-au-Prince. Thus he and his staff frequently travel eastward toward the border with the Dominican Republic into the Central and Eastern Districts to recruit potential athletes from towns across the country. The athletes themselves are similarly dedicated,  some traveling for hours to practice with their teammates.

A building in Mirebalais.

The inland situation is dire in a different way than that in Port-au-Prince. Out in the provinces, the earthquake was a catastrophe mostly in that the destruction of the capital will have major repercussions for the provision of services throughout the country. There simply weren’t many big buildings to collapse in small towns like Mirebalais. This lack is a symptom of a deep poverty, perhaps even more substantial and deeply ingrained than in the city. To cite one example, today we met Shelda Del’Homme, an adorable five-year-old girl whose left eye was swollen shut. Her sister told us that she had cancer, and Carol, a therapist herself, suspects that she also has a particularly virulent infection. Yet she’s receiving no treatment. At an age where the greatest concerns of most American children are Dora the Explorer and swiping Oreos when Mom isn’t looking, Shelda can barely sleep from the pain in her eye and her back. A few days in the Haitian sun provides more than an egregious sunburn; for the BlazeSports delegation, it is illuminating the amazing need–and the amazing determination–of the nation’s people. In the NPC of Haiti, we believe we have found a capable and dynamic partner, and we are eager to join them in tackling the myriad and complex problems facing Hatians with disabilities.

Shelda Del’Homme.

Blaze in Haiti, Day 1

Travis Mushett    Articles    

The BlazesSports delegation–consisting of Carol, Duncan, and myself–has landed in Haiti, and while the images of the earthquake’s devastation have largely evaporated from the American media, the destruction stubbornly remains. We were greeted by the President of the National Paralympic Committee (NPC) of Haiti, Jean-Chevalier Sanon. Mr. Sanon is an avatar of energy, motivation, and organizational savvy, and today he gave us a tour of Haiti’s NPC  headquarters before escorting us through three encampments overflowing with refugees from the quake.

The Haitian NPC headquarters in Port-au-Prince.

The encampments were essentially endless tent cities that teemed with the homeless. January’s earthquake took an already struggling country and all but destroyed its very limited infrastructure, to say nothing of the nearly quarter million lives it claimed. We met a number of Haitians with new disabilities attributable to falling debris and collapsing buildings, so, sadly, the ranks of the national NPC’s athletes–currently over 500–are likely to swell. But thank god it’s there. Mr. Sanon has assembled an impressive and largely volunteer staff that is fighting innumerable challenges to provide sport, rehabilitation, and visibility to a frequently neglected class of Haitian society.

Jean-Chevalier Sanon (second from the right in the blue and orange shirt) with residents of a tent city.

We’ve been told that we haven’t seen the worst yet, and what we’ve already seen is heartrending. Tomorrow we will be heading into the provinces outside of Port-au-Prince where the situation is reportedly even more, to speak euphemistically, challenging. It’s clear that the NPC’s efforts are making substantial headway, especially in terms of identifying Haitians with disabilities, but it’s also clear that they could use the help and support of the international community. This is why BlazeSports is here; by forging a partnership with the NPC of Haiti, we intend to augment and expand efforts on behalf of Haitians with disabilities.

Tonight, though, we sleep. It’s been a long day of travel and we have an early morning of meetings and interviews. But before I hit the sack, here are a couple snapshots from our first day on Hispaniola.

Even in the cramped and dirty conditions of the encampment, sports can bring joy. These boys were gathered around a small generator-powered television to watch Real Madrid play Barcelona in a football match.

A tarp provided by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is fashioned into a makeshift home. Though some camps contained commercially-made tents, most were populated primarily by improvised structures like this one.

Final Medal Count

Travis Mushett    Articles    

Pic courtesy of ChirsD.ca.

And thus the Games come to an end with Russia standing tall atop the medal count with a seriously impressive tally of 38 pieces of hardware. Germany, too, had a stellar Paralympics, leading the gold medal count with 13 and taking home a total of 24 medals. The US squad matched its 5th place performance from four years ago in Torino. While it wasn’t a landmark  performance overall for the US, the ice sledge hockey team did win a high profile gold and BlazeSports’ own Ann Cody was there in her capacity as an IPC Governing Board Member to present flowers to the American squad.

1. Russian Federation: 12G, 16S, 10B – Total 38
2. Germany: 13G, 5S, 6B – Total 12
3. Canada: 10G, 5S, 4B – Total 19
3. Ukraine: 5G, 8S, 6B – Total 19
5. United States: 4G, 5S, 4B – Total 13
6. Slovakia: 6G, 2S, 3B – Total 11
6. Austria: 3G, 4S, 4B – Total 11
6. Japan: 3G, 3S, 5B – Total 11
9. Belarus: 2G, 0S, 8B – Total 9
10. Italy: 1G, 3S, 3B – Total 7
11. France: 1G, 4S, 1B – Total 6
11. Norway: 1G, 3S, 2B – Total 6
13. Australia: 0G, 1S, 3B – Total 4
14. Spain: 1G, 2S, 0B – Total 3
14. Switzerland: 1G, 2S, 0B – Total 3
16. Finland: 0G, 1S, 1B – Total 2
16. Sweden: 0G, 0S, 2B – Total 2
18. New Zealand: 1G, 0S, 0B – Total 1
18. Korea: 0G, 1S, oB – Total 1
18. Czech Republic: 0G, 0S, 1B – Total 1
18. Poland: 0G, 0S, 1B – Total 1

3/17 Medal Count

Travis Mushett    Articles    

Pic courtesy of ChirsD.ca.

While I was busy traveling across the continent yesterday, Russia surged again, taking 8 medals on St. Patrick’s Day. Germany had a good day, as well, doubling their medal count and leaping into a tie for 2nd place. Full results can be found here.

1. Russian Federation: 8G, 10S, 5B – Total 23
2. Germany: 7G, 3S, 2B – Total 12
2. Ukraine: 3G, 4S, 5B – Total 12
4. Canada: 3G, 3S, 2B – Total 8
5. Austria: 2G, 2S, 1B – Total 5
6. Slovakia: 3G, 0S, 1B – Total 4
6. United States: 1G, 2S, 1B – Total 4
6. Belarus: 1G, 0S, 3B – Total 4
9. Norway: 1G, 2S, 0B – Total 3
9. Italy: 0G, 0S, 3B – Total 3
9. Japan: 0G, 0S, 3B – Total 3
12. Spain: 0G, 2S, 0B – Total 2
12. Australia: 0G, 0S, 2B – Total 2
14. New Zealand: 1G, 0S, 0B – Total 1
14. Finland: 0G, 1S, 0B – Total 1
14. Switzerland: 0G, 1S, 0B – Total 1
14. France: 0G, 0S, 1B – Total 1
14. Poland: 0G, 0S, 1B – Total 1

3/16 Medal Count

Travis Mushett    Articles    

Pic courtesy of ChirsD.ca.

It appears that the Russians read my medal count post from yesterday, and have amicably obliged my request. A pair of alpine medals have pushed the US into a tie for 5th place, a development that nicely compliments the sledge hockey teams 6-0 trouncing of Japan. The Canadians have much to celebrate as well, as they move into a tie for 2nd in the overall medal count and their hockey squad is currently up 5-0 against historic powerhouse Norway with 10 minutes left in the match. As always, full results can be found here.

1. Russian Federation: 6G, 6S, 3B – Total 15
2. Canada: 2G, 3S, 2B – Total 7
2. Ukraine: 2G, 2S, 3B – Total 7
4. Germany: 4G, 2S, 0B – Total 6
5. Austria: 2G, 1S, 1B – Total 4
5. United States: 1G, 2S, 1B – Total 4
5. Belarus: 1G, 0S, 3B – Total 4
8. Slovakia: 3G, 0S, 0B – Total 3
8. Italy: 0G, 0S, 3B – Total 3
8. Japan: 0G, 0S, 3B – Total 3
11. Spain: 0G, 2S, 0B – Total 2
11. Norway: 0G, 2S, 0B – Total 2
11. Australia: 0G, 0S, 2B – Total 2
14. New Zealand: 1G, 0S, 0B – Total 1
14. Finland: 0G, 1S, 0B – Total 1
14. Switzerland: 0G, 1S, 0B – Total 1
14. Poland: 0G, 0S, 1B – Total 1

Oh, Vancouver!

Travis Mushett    Articles    

Sadly enough, today is my final day in Canada for the foreseeable future. It’s been grand, but I regret that I didn’t really get the opportunity to take in Vancouver until now. The Weather Gods seemed to know of my predicament and provided me with a character that’s been absent during the duration of my trip, the sun.

Pure luck led me to a statue of Rick Hansen, the wheelchair athlete whose globe spanning Man in Motion World Tour raised $26 million for spinal cord research. This statue is placed prominently outside of GM Place, home of the Vancouver Canucks, and helped explain to me the unbelievably warm reception Rick received at the Opening Ceremony. This man resides with Mark Messier, Wayne Gretzky, Steve Yzerman, and Terry Fox on the pantheon of Canadian sport legends.

A short walk from the Hansen statue is the Falls Creek seawall. Along the water are hundreds, if not thousands, of rocks stacked into spikes and formations:

At first I thought the stones had rods running through them to make them stand upright, but a quick lifting up a top stone revealed that they were simply balanced on one another. Luckily, I managed to find the man responsible for creating and maintaining these stacks. Ziggy, an older gentlemen with an indeterminate (Greek?) accent, was wandering amongst the rocks, stacking and restacking them as he saw fit. After he explained that the work was his and his alone, I Ziggy if anyone paid him for his labor. “No, it’s relaxing,” he said. “You ask anyone, they know. They say, that’s what Ziggy do.”

This is only the tip of the Vancouver iceberg. The Games celebration in Robson Square features a zip line and an ice skating rink. The Hudson Bay Company’s Olympic/Paralympic Superstore is still loaded with shirts, stuffed animals, and pairs of the ubiquitous red Canada mittens, mittens so popular that they often force the checkout line to nearly an hour’s length. And MacLeod’s Books is a secondhand bookstore of the first caliber. With any luck, I’ll be back someday when the Games aren’t bouncing me around British Columbia like a pinball. The Paralympics are an intense kind of awesome, but I think a full experience of Vancouver would require an awesome of a more leisurely variety.