May 6, 2026 • 40 mins
On Episode 16 of The Away End, John has returned from England with something on his heart. After letting it out, he deep dives into the Haitian National Team. And Daniel tells the story of Jorge, his Honduran fixer who created an unexpected, impenetrable forcefield around him that revealed its real power during a walk to the stadium for the final of the Honduran League in the most violent country in Latin America at the time.
Featuring Daniel and Jorge on backup vocals - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAmSrU5cHZE
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
Hello, and welcome to the Away and I'm John Green.
I'm Danielle Alerconne. How's it going, man, it's going great today.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
I'm back from England where I was watching my football
team AFC Wimbledon end their season with a four nil pummeling.
They were on the nil side of that four nil pummeling,
but it didn't matter because we stayed up.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Wow. How did they celebrate a four to oh drubbing? Well?
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Pretty good? Actually pretty good. It was a party atmosphere.
Every time the other team scored a goal, the fans
would sing don staying up olay ola. So yeah, the
vibes were great, vibes were immaculate. It was hard to
ruin that day and nothing could. So it was a
great time. I want to talk to you, though, Daniel,
about something that's been on my heart. As people say,
(00:55):
hit me. I want to talk to you about two
pieces of art actually, and I'm going to connect them
to football the best way I can. But the first
is this conceptual work by the artist Tea monkey Pa.
She made this piece called TV for Chickens. This is
about twenty years ago and it was a piece of
art video art shown to chickens the chickens that it
(01:16):
was shown to lived in small cages, like the vast
majority of chickens do, and what it showed on the
TV screens was video of happy chickens, like pecking through
endless emerald fields of green. I guess that's redundant. All
emerald fields are fields of green. But you get my point.
It's very dark work of art.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
I wasn't going to correct you on that, but yes, yes.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
It's a very dark work of art. But I think
about it a lot when I watch football, because football
for me on TV is also you know, it's a
literally green field of masterfully coordinated humans running about in
not a dissimilar way to the way we've been running
(02:00):
around fields for like over one hundred thousand years, right,
Like being outside playing silly games together is a fundamental
human thing that goes way way back. And when I
am sitting on my couch watching this big green field
with people playing on it, on some level, I'm watching
(02:20):
TV for chickens.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
But for me, right.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Yes, and I love love televised soccer, like there is
something better about being there in real life, of course,
Like there's no question that football is best appreciated live
it's beautiful to be in community. You get to share
your love with thousands of other people, you get to
sing in concert with them, all that stuff. Plus you
(02:47):
see a lot when you watch the game live that
you don't see when you watch on TV because when
you watch on TV, you're mostly watching the ball, and
when you watch in person, it's much easier to watch
like the formations and so on. But I still love
watching soccer on TV. Like some of my favorite memories
Liverpool's comeback in Istanbul in two thousand and five, Leicester
City's wild run to the Premier League title in twenty sixteen,
(03:10):
those were primarily TV based experiences for me, and they
were great experiences. Even when I was alone watching the game,
I still loved it, and not just because of TV
for chickens, but partly because it's TV for chickens for sure,
and so.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
It is really I feel like there's I feel like
there's a butt coming. Man, there's a butt coming. Okay,
what is it?
Speaker 2 (03:33):
But something is on the edge of ruining the experience
of watching televised soccer of TV for chickens for humans,
because there is one way to ruin the game, and
that is to put frickin' advertisements in it. And I'm
not talking about like the little Toyota logo up by
(03:53):
the score bug. I'm not talking to you about the
two minutes of stoppage time brought to you by Lexis.
I am talking about actual advertisements that interrupt the game
while the clock is moving, that take you away from
the literal field and put you in a GLP one
ad or whatever it is. The whole pleasure of football
(04:13):
is that it is forty five straight minutes of green grass,
not interrupted by advertisements about psoriasis treatments. And there are
strong rumors, first seen by me when you sent them
to me in the Athletic, that this year's World Cup
may have ads during the so called hydration breaks. Now,
these hydration breaks, Daniel, as you know, are key television watching.
(04:36):
Which players drink just water, which drink the weird pink
stuff like these are big questions that I want answers to,
and I can't get those answers if I'm watching an
ad for some obscure drug. Europeans listening to this are like, what,
you can't advertise drugs, Oh, yes you can. You sure
can advertise drugs.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
I thought Sky Rizzy was a rapper, but it turns
out it's a medicine. Yeah, you sure can. So let
me play Devil's Advocate here.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
John, Yeah, this is going to take me to my
second piece of art that I want to talk about.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
But go ahead and play Devil's Out. No, no, but
Devil's Advocate being like you know, player welfare. It is
hot in North America.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
For the hydration breaks. I just want to be able
to watch them. I think they contain key information from
my experience. Okay, okay, I understand, I understand you. You
are pro players drinking, whether it's the pink stuff or
the green stuff or the water, but you want to
see them. You want the groving drone camera over them
because also we should say, you know, it's interesting parenthetical here,
(05:42):
but like coaching in football is done in these little
bursts before the game and at halftime and then like
whatever you managed to shout to like you know, whatever
winger is on your line, or if you make a
substitute and you bring him in. But a lot of
good managers are going to use as hydration breaks for
pep talks or little tactical tweaks, and you want the
(06:04):
camera on that you can see Carlo Angelot with a
cigar in his arms around Vinnie Junior and the whole
Brazilian squad, and you want it.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
You want to be there. You don't want to go
off to a commercial. I want to see Pocheccino's huge
gesticulations as he explains why the US men's national team
has organized itself so poorly and so on. That is
exactly what I want, and that is what I think
I deserve, because this is my TV for chickens, and
interrupting it with progressive advertisements like progressive insurance advertisements about
(06:33):
the Lexus December to Remember or whatever. You can't do
that while the clock is ticking. You can do it
at halftime. You can do it at the end of
the game. You can do it.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Before the game. You can't do it while the clock
is ticking. That is my forty five minutes of freedom
and piece and TV for chickens. Now, I understand that
I live in a world that is funded by advertising.
I understand that this podcast is funded by advertising. I
understand that the Internet that I use is funded by advertising.
I understand that. But this brings me to my second
(07:00):
piece of art. Daniel have you ever heard William Faulkner's
resignation letter from the Post Office.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
No, I have not. Well, this is you are about
to experience one of the great letters ever written in
human history.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
Oh God, I can't wait. I will read it to
you in its entirety. As long as I live under
the capitalistic system, I expect to have my life influenced
by the demands of moneyed people. But I will be
damned if I propose to be at the beck and
call of every itinerant scoundrel who has two cents to
invest in a postage stamp. This, sir, is my resignation.
(07:37):
So that is precisely how I feel about advertisements during
the hydration breaks, Daniel, I feel that I have been.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Pushed to the edge.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
I expect to live under a capitalistic system where I
am influenced by money to people, but this is a
bridge too far for me.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
You know what. My dog is very strongly about this
as well.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
Uh, John, Uh, if I may, you are invoking the
great William Faulkner in this, Uh you know, righteous diet tribe.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
And yet are you resigning? Actually, are you telling me
that you're not gonna watch the World Cup because they're
going to show a Coca Cola commercial during the hydration breaks,
or they're gonna be like this hydration break brought to
you by Coca Cola, and like now here's like the
Polar Bears and and like you know, the the people
you know have give them the world of coke or
all that. You're not you know, So what are you
(08:36):
resigning from? Man? I'm not resigning. That's the thing. Man.
They got me. They got me.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
They can monetize as much of my attention as they
want because they got me. They got me in I
love football too much. Yeah, but I wouldn't. I will say,
I don't think I would have fallen as deeply in
love with it if there were, if there were ads
during the hydration breaks. That's my TV for chickens, man,
and I I need it. I need to see that
big green field and the people running on it.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
Yeah, I agree with you. I think. I think that
one of the pleasures of soccer is that the clock
doesn't stop, that it keeps moving. It's like a metaphor
for life, the inexorable passage of time. And I enjoy
that a great deal. And I think the where the
where we see the cynicism of FIFA is in the
fact that the hydration breaks are also occurring in say Atlanta,
(09:24):
where the stadium is air conditioned, and so that's not
the hydrogen breaks are not sort of weather dependent hydration breaks,
which I think we all agree that there should be
if the temperatures is dangerous, you know, but it's not.
It's not. So that's where you can really tell, sort
of like the you know, that's how you can see
what the cards are actually playing. Yeah, it's just starting
(09:46):
to feel close to having a commercial break in the
middle of the game, which for me brings it closer
to basketball and American football and baseball, which are so
inundated with advertisements as live experiences that they really aren't
that good of a television product. Like obviously, lots of
people still watch them. I still watch them to some extent,
(10:07):
but like I much prefer soccer because it has that
sense of openness and like you say, the clock never
stops running. There's a proposal out there, especially in sort
of lower league English football, to institute a rule where
the game lasts fifty five minutes, but the clock stops
every time the ball goes out of bounds, and I
think this would be a horrible rule. I understand what
(10:29):
the purpose of it is is to try to prevent
time wasting and and and it's true there's a lot
of time wasting in football. But I really like that
the clock never stops running and that just there's there.
You tack on the extra time at the extra time. Yeah, no,
I love that. This is going to be an awkward
segue to our ad break, John, I just want to
(10:53):
mention that, so we'll definitely support our advertisers. Just you know, understand.
And this isn't TV for chickens, Daniel, this is a podcast.
It's different. There you go. It is different. It is different,
and I'm just a spare you the embarrassment. I'm gonna
throw to the ad break. You don't have nice. So
(11:15):
with all that in mind, thank you for that rant. John.
We'll be right back after a quick break.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
All right, Daniel, We're back at the away end and
it's time to do a deep dive into I don't
think I listed this country in particular.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
On my list of World Cup teams I'm rooting.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
For, but I have to say, of all the underdogs,
my favorite underdog, the underdog. I'll be rooting for the
hardest in this year's World Cup is Haiti. I asked
a Haitian friend of mine in the run up to
recording this episode what his hopes are for Haiti this
World Cup, and he had a very interesting answer. He
(12:02):
didn't say anything about like beating Scotland or drawing Brazil
or anything. He said, I just want the country to
come together and the diaspora to come together for a
few weeks, a few weeks of a break. As I'm
sure you know, Haiti has been in tremendous turmoil since
the twenty twenty one assassination of their president. Gang violence
(12:23):
is a nationwide problem, but especially challenging in the capital
city of Porta Prince. I know of healthcare workers who
live at the hospitals where they work because traveling to
and from work is so unsafe. It is a chaotic
and terrifying situation. And not for the first time in
recent or indeed ancient history, Haiti's cries have fallen on
(12:44):
deaf years internationally. And this is a nation that has
been systemically impoverished for centuries by the rich world, and
now it is suffering tremendously, And I think that's important
background for understanding why this World Cup qualification means so
much to Haitians, whether they live inside of Haiti or
outside of it. It's Haiti's first World Cup qualification since
(13:07):
nineteen seventy four. They are the only Caribbean nation to
have qualified for two World Cups, also the only Caribbean
nation to win a CONCACAFT tournament title back in nineteen
seventy three. They made it to the semifinals of the
Gold Cup in twenty nineteen. And they're kind of having
a second golden age. They had this one golden age
in the nineteen seventies when they qualified for the World Cup,
(13:28):
won that CONCACAFF tournament, and now they're back. They have been,
you know, a strong footballing nation relative to conca CAF
for a long time. But it is not a fluke
that Haiti qualified for the World Cup this year. You know,
they had to beat some really good teams and you
also have to remember that they had to do so
(13:49):
without being able to play any of their qualification matches
at home in Haiti, and so they have no home
field advantage during the entire qualification process. You know, John
where they played, Yeah, so they played in neutral sites.
They played in Currossow most of their home games and
(14:10):
in games they really needed to win. They had to
win their last two games, and they won both of them.
They beat both Costa Rica and Nicaragua in Currosow and
other things had to go their way. But to beat
Costa Rica in Nicaraguay is no joke, like those are
proper footballing countries. And that's why I think Haiti might
(14:33):
just have a chance to do something at this World
Cup other than just show up, because they've already experienced
the intense, intense pressure of a neutral site match where
it's all or nothing. There is a problem, however, which
is that they are in an incredibly difficult group. They
(14:56):
are in a group with Brazil, Morocco and Scotland. So
Brazil is obviously, Brazil, Morocco is arguably.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
Although you and I would not argue.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
It, the reigning African champions, and Scotland. You know, Scotland
are good ish, they have some they have some really
good players. But that's that's where Haiti is going to
be looking, I think, to get a result, and if
they could win that game, they'll probably qualify for the
knockout rounds. As we've talked about before most teams are
(15:27):
going to qualify for the knockout round, so a lot
of teams there's gonna there's gonna be some weird knockout
round qualifications. I think that's also, of course, where Scotland
is going to be looking for points, is up against Haiti,
and so that that'll be a really interesting game.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
I think.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
I think Brazil and Morocco are some tough hills to climb.
Their recent results have been pretty good. They tied with Iceland.
Iceland's still got a strong team and they lost one
nil to Tunisia. You know, they play Cape Verdet right
before the World Cup as their warm up match, and
(16:01):
then their first matches against Scotland. So I think I
think Haiti will know early on how their World.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
Cup is going to look.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Are they there, you know, just to celebrate qualifying for
the World Cup, which is a huge accomplishment in and
of itself, or are they there to try to get
something from the tournament. But yeah, I mean it's going
to be I'm just so excited that they qualified. I
think it's such a huge accomplishment. I think it's so
hard to qualify without being able to play any games
at home, and I really I'll really be rooting for
(16:31):
Haiti in this tournament. I think I think they're they're
they're they're one of the most likable underdogs of the
World Cup.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Yeah. No, that's great. They're playing I was just looking
this up. They're playing Scotland in Boston. Yeah, that's a
that's going to be a very interesting game and I'm
sure that the diaspora will be out in full force
supporting their team. It's going to feel like a home game,
I believe because of bets of that presence. Yeah. Yeah,
Scotland travel pretty well, but I think that's going to
(17:02):
feel like more like a home game, probably than playing
in kuras Al. Yeah, probably so, probably. So. I just
think of all the love of the Haitians going up
from New York. They're gonna go. I mean, it's gonna
be it's gonna be great. I wish them a lot
of luck with no disrespecting lots of love to the
Scotts obviously. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
No, we're not trying to pick favorites here because we
need all all of our listeners.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Yeah, that's what it's about. Really. Yeah, no, and but John,
do the Haitian players on the national team, how many
of them actually, like they don't even live in Haiti.
They can't, right, They're coming from all over the world
sort of like.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
I think only one of them currently plays in Haiti.
And even you know, like we talk about this all
the time, but like national teams are comprised of people
who often may not have been born in the nation
where they represent. They you know, national ties are incredibly complicated.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
But even by.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
The standards of contemporary international football, like Haitian players play
everywhere from Tehran to Wolverhampton to Quito to Dallas. I
will say that I'm pretty hard on MLS, Daniel, because
I think it's a monopolistic enterprise that primarily exists to
(18:23):
bolster the assets of billionaires rather than to be like
real community clubs. And because they're franchises, they can move,
as Vancouver may be experiencing soon. And it's really difficult
to you know, trust in the community nature of a
football club when it can theoretically be wrested from you,
(18:45):
as the Columbus Crew almost experienced, as you know, and
as happens a lot in other Major league sports in
the United States. So I can be critical of MLS.
I will say, I think MLS has been hugely important
for developing American soccer players and also footballers in the Caribbean.
Like of the current Haitian national team, I think seven
(19:06):
of them currently play in MLS and several more used to.
And so this is a great example of how MLS
can develop, you know, talent around the US, the Caribbean,
the CONCACAF region. And I think that's worth acknowledging. Absolutely, Yeah, great,
(19:31):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
I love it. I will I mean, I would love
to see Haiti get something out of this tournament.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
But sometimes maybe that's just a goal. Maybe that's just
an amazing like I don't know, I think the goal
has to be. This is something I've been thinking about
as a men's national team fan that I need to
reset my expectations that like, winning the World Cup is
not what a success looks like for the US men's
national team. Having one statement signature win is what success
looks like. And that could be in the round of
(19:58):
thirty two, you know, and make it to the round
of sixteen, and that's a great outcome and we lose
to Brazil or Germany or whoever, and you know, so
it goes I think similarly, like I remember, I remember
during the African Cup of Nations, not this most recent time,
but the one before sier Leone qualified for the African
(20:18):
Cup of Nations and they had this nil nil draw
and like people were out on the streets of Freetown
celebrating a nil nil draw right right, one point from
one tournament was huge because that's just where Sierra Leoni
and football is at. And so I think, you know,
I think everybody has to set their metrics for success appropriately.
(20:40):
That said, when we listen back to this segment after
Haiti makes the semi final, I'm going to look like
a real joy kill.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
I know. It reminds me actually of this great documentary
that I think I mentioned on here before. I'll mention
it again. It's called Uno and it's from win Ondura's
qualified and the one goal that they scored in a
tournament where they got battered, absolutely battered, but in one
of the games was like eleven to one. And this
is the stort of that one goal.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
I do want to highlight one Haitian player, Dunckson's Nazon,
who plays in Tehran. Now, he's had a long career.
He's the leading goal scorer. He played in France, he
played at Wolverhampton Wanderers, he played in France again, he
played in I think Bulgaria, so he's been all over.
(21:28):
My favorite team he went to was Oldham Athletic. I've
always had a soft spot for Oldham.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
I went there.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
I went there once as a Wimbledon fan and had
a good time. But anyway, he has had a long
career and is currently their top goal scorer. I think
he's had forty five goals playing for the Haitian national team.
And also our producer Sean just pointed out that he
just got the key to the city in North Miami
(21:55):
Beach for everything he's done for the Haitian community.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
That's wonderful. I would love to know, Like I I
really admire these the arc of these lives. When you've
played in so many places, it must be such an
interesting and crazy way to get to know the world.
I can write playing in a Haitian guy playing in Tehran,
like now, like what what must that be? Like? Right?
(22:22):
I would love to sit and hear the story of
that life, you know. I think we should also keep
up the tradition of mentioning some writers from Haiti and
and I guess I think for you know, English readers,
I guess I would I would go with the unticat
who I'm sure you've read Krick Crack. She has a
(22:43):
bunch of great novels that I that I really recommend,
and his uh really beautiful essays that we're posting New
Yorker now and then. So that's another another way to
support the Haitian team. I guess team literature obviously. Yeah.
I love that you're on team literature, Daniel. I love this.
I love this tradition in literature. Yeah, it's a great tradition.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
And I love that when you never recommend like pulp
writers either, you're never recommending like some some pulp writer.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
It's always proper capital L literature with you. So I'm
just trying to keep the away end classy. John.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
Yeah, let's take a quick break and uh, I'm gonna
tell you a story about uh about gonna do this.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
We'll come back, all right, John, We're back on the
way end. So I'm gonna tell you a story about
I'll do this. But I want to ask you first,
(23:40):
do you know what a fixer is? Uh?
Speaker 2 (23:43):
Yeah, one of my good friends from college is a fixer, Okay,
where I don't think I should say more than that.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
All right, okay, all right, all right.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
Yeah, everybody needs a fixer, right, Like when you travel
for work in interesting places or challenging places, you generally
get a fixer.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
Yeah, and you get a fixer kind of when you're
especially this is you know, for journal there's I guess
there's different kinds of fixers, you know. And there are
fixers who kind of keep journalists, foreign journalists from making
complete assays of themselves, right, kind of orient them around
the country, keep them safe, like don't go here, don't
(24:26):
go there, this is dumb, you know, help you find sources.
You know, it's a it's a job that lots of
local journalists do, like in addition to their local journalism,
they'll also sort of work with foreign journalists to do this.
And so I want to tell you a story about
a friend of mine who's a fixer. He became my
friend when he was my fixer. I should say it
starts around in twenty seventeen. I decided I want to
(24:48):
go to and Dudas. I didn't have like really any
high minded reasons. I was just curious, you know, at
the time, Oh Dudas was the most violent country in
Latin America. And I run this Benish language pod cast,
and I just kind of wanted to go there. I
wanted to see what it was like. I was specifically interested
in young people, like how, how what it's like to
grow up in a place like this. And I kept
(25:10):
thinking of the you know, the the Cormick McCarthy novel
No Country for Old Men, Like I had just had
this this phrase in my head that was like no
Country for young Men, and and I just wanted to
go there. I just wanted to see it. So I
happened to be in Nicaragua, and so I took a
bus from Manawa to see In the weeks leading up
to this trip, I did what anyone would do, which
(25:31):
is you try to find a fixer, and I started
calling around and I eventually got connected with this guy
named Jorge. I found out that he'd never worked as
a fixer before, but I really liked him. We were
just talking on WhatsApp. He'd worked at a radio station,
he'd done, you know, covered youth violence, and he knew
a lot of people, and so we were sending messages
(25:51):
on WhatsApp. Mostly voice memos actually, just to nail down
the details like the dates of my trip and his
fee and that kind of thing. And of course I
was curious, like, who is the guy that I'm gonna
be hanging out with while I'm in Honduras and so
on his WhatsApp image it was like him, He's wearing sunglasses,
he got long hair, and he was playing the saxophone.
He looked like a rock star. Wow. And I was like,
(26:13):
I was like, dope, all right, coolah, let's go.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
Because the dream really is to have a fixer who
also can play Cold Trane, right, I mean that's the dream.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
Yeah, or just a fixer I think honestly, a fixer
who's cooler than you are is the goal, right, because
most of them are My friend from college certainly is yeah.
Because also I mean at at at my essence John,
you know this, like I'm a super dork, you know, like, hmmm,
if the like if the kind of constant references to
(26:46):
like literature has not like clued in our readers into
like that's how I interface with the world in a
lot of ways is through literature and books and art.
That's true. That's true, then it's I should just state
it plainly, like, that's mostly how I think about the
world through stories, and often through stories that have been written.
And I like talking to people who've done things and
who had no more interesting lives than I have, and
(27:07):
so that's part of my I feel like my job
as a journalist has been that. Right. So anyway, so
I'm getting on this bus to Managua, and I'm like,
you know, all I have is this little kind of
like thumbnail image from the WhatsApp, and so I was like, okay, well,
you know, just so we can just you know, so
you know what I look like. I'm not super tall,
I have kind of like this way crazy hair, you know,
(27:29):
that's it, you know, like I'm wearing whatever nonsense I
usually wear. And then he sent me this voice note, Yes,
I and Rolo is in a person so if I
still there, Okay, so done. I don't know how much
(27:53):
of that you caught, but some of our listener speak
Spanish and they may have understood, but anyways, I'll translate.
So what basically says is that it'll be easy for
me to recognize him because he'll be the blind guy
at the bus station, right, Okay, So it's been years
and I have a certain amount of distance, and I
can admit that the situation felt ridiculous to me, Like
(28:17):
I'm going to the most violent country in Latin America.
I'm a you know, I'm a journalist, I've been places, whatever,
but this is like, you know, not a place that
I've been before. And my guide as I go to
the most dangerous parts of the most dangerous cities in
the most dangerous country in Latin America is going to
be a guy who's blind. So I'm like, okay. But
(28:37):
it was like, honestly, man, I felt like I couldn't
say anything because it was like I was literally getting
on the bus and I decided that I just had
to barrel on I get there. And in fact, obviously
it was very easy to recognize Jork and he met
me at the bus station and he had this big,
welcoming smile, and you know, I was just like, okay,
let's go. And I made a choice mostly out of embarrassment,
(28:58):
which is that I just didn't mention it. Yeah, which
is like a weird thing. And I'm not like I
just like it was like isaif I hadn't noticed, I
was just like, whoa you know, which I think says
more about me and like sort of like kind of
like broaching something like I just was like, oh, well,
let's just you know, pretend that this is not an
issue or a concern, and you know, we spent the
(29:18):
next few days cris crossing things he got about, going
from one interview or another, and we became friends, and
I learned a lot of stuff about and they're really
important things that sort of like explained that who he is.
First of all, that he was born blind, and secondly,
from a very young age, he had kind of promised
himself that he would be self reliant. When his parents
split up, he felt like his dad didn't want him,
(29:40):
so his dad took his sister. And felt mostly that
his dad didn't want him because he was a burden, right,
he said, with his mom, who was this really strong
willed woman who had to work super hard to put
food on the table. And he decided a super young
age and he was never going to be a burden
to anybody that it was he would never let his
blind as be an impediment to anything. So he grew
in the neighborhood, playing soccer, you know, hanging out with
(30:03):
like just being like a normal kid. When he was twelve,
he got a job as an assistant at a mechanics shop,
and he learned to take things apart by touch. He
could recognize the tools and their size, and he was
just kind of an assistant at a mechanics shop, and
he loved the challenge and he loved really bringing home
money to his family, to his mom because he just
again didn't want to be a burden to her anyway
(30:23):
and wanted to contribute. A couple of years later, he
did what so many young men, young Central American men do,
which is he headed north. He was only fourteen years old,
and he traveled without a cane, without sunglasses, and with
the help of a friend, he even managed to jump
on the Beast. I don't know if you know what
Labistia is. The Beast is this migrant train that runs
(30:44):
from the south of Mexico to the center of Mexico
where many migrants just right on top to sort of
get across Mexico. He was arrested or detained by Mexican
authorities in Tampico and then and deported and sent back
to Wandudas. It was disappointing, but in other ways it
was a hugeccoplishment because he was so self reliant and
(31:06):
so self possessed that a lot of people he was
traveling with never even realized he was blind. And when
he got home, he didn't even tell his mom that
he'd tried to emigrate. She was like, where you been.
He was like, I've been around, Yeah, so this is
a really incredible I've enough to stuff. Yeah I was
gone for a week, you know. Yeah. I mean I
mentioned all this John because I want you to understand
(31:27):
just what an incredible guy or his he had a
by necessity developed this really intuitive sense of the world,
of understanding of people, and I saw it on display
when we would go meet people that he had helped
connect me with. He told me that from the moment
he shakes her hand, he's like trying to understand what
kind of person you are. And you know, that's like
the essence of being a journalist right now. In certain
(31:49):
practical ways, it was a challenge, Like we started to
work and something really unusual would happen. For example, we'd
show up in this neighborhood and I'm like the foreigner,
I'm scared all the time. I'm like trying to make
sense of what I'm seeing. I've heard all these horror stories,
and so I'd look around and I'd be like, Okay,
is it dangerous here? And then he would be like,
(32:11):
I don't know, describe it, and it really it had
this remarkable impact on me, John, because I had to
pay attention to things in a really specific way. So
I start telling him. I would describe the graffiti on
the walls and like the you know, the people standing around,
like the you know, the kids, and what color shoes
(32:31):
they were wearing, and like you know, the tattoos I saw,
and like the guards, what kind of weapons they had,
you know. Like I was just super observant, and I
would whisper it almost like I was like sharing this
secret with like like you know, an intimate friend. And
we had become close friends at that point. And then
most of time would listen and be like, hmmm, nah,
it's not dangerous. We're fine. And this is where it
(32:52):
gets super deep for me, John, because he was the right.
Actually we were fine, and this is what I had
not understood, especially me. I was totally fine. Uh, And
here's where it's it's it's something that I didn't understand
the first but he explained it to me. He said
that he had anticipated this when you're with a blind person.
As a sighted person, everyone kind of observes you with
(33:15):
this like gentle admiration. You know. Yeah, Tigos Gota was
a dangerous city. But when I had Jorge with me
and he's, you know, we're walking around town, he's, you know,
holding my shoulder, like I have this kind of force
field because everyone's looking at me with with you know,
like they're like they're the benevolence and they're they're like, oh,
(33:36):
look at that guy. He's so kind, he's so generous.
And I was walking around in this absurd, unearned protective bubble. Right. So,
in fact I had arrived in TINGUSI gotba imagining that
like my fixer should be like this super tough guy
who like streets smart, knew this and that and blah blah.
And in fact, the safest I possibly could have been
(33:58):
was walking around these really tough names and talking to
really you know, tough looking people with Jor on my shoulder.
Because it was just like, like I said, like having
this force field. This was never more clear John than
we went to the local soccer stadium. It happened to
be while I was in town the final of the
Duran League. The game was Mottagwa versus Progresso. We got
(34:18):
tickets and you know, we walked to the stadium. Walking
to the stadium is something that American fans don't know
anything about, but it's a really marvelous thing.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
It's crazy, it's such a it's such a great way
to do it. You can do it in Portland. I
saw people walk to the stadium in Portland. That's the
only time I've ever seen it.
Speaker 1 (34:36):
Yeah, it's just like as you get closer to the stadium,
what you see and feel is like like like tributaries
gathering into a large stream and then a river. People
and fans, and the closer you get, the energy and
people are coming from every angle and different train stations
and they're walking. And I've seen it in so many cities.
It's really a special thing. It isn't quite the same
(34:59):
when you, you know, drive to the stadium and park
in a you know, acres away from the stadium in
a large parking lot. Anyway, that's a parenthetical that has
not only do with the story. I've think it's already
been established John that I'm not a particularly brave person.
This walk was one of the most intimidating walks I've
ever taken, and I don't think I've ever felt like
(35:19):
more of an outsider in any place that I've ever been.
But it was soon incredibly clear that everything had told
me about my privilege visa his blindness was one hundred
percent true. Because these dudes would like crazy tats and
like scary generally like intimidating personas, were coming up to me,
and they were clapping me on the back, congratulating me.
(35:41):
When we finally got to our seats, people were bringing
us beers, and I was the beneficiary again of all
this unearned good will, just because I was with Jorge.
He was the one showing me around. He knew everything
about the local league, about the players and their styles,
the tactics, the history. He'd been to the stadium before.
But of course, for everyone around us, that possibility just
(36:01):
never crossed their minds. Everyone must have been wondering about
our relationship, about who I was to him, like a brother,
a cousin, a benevolent friend. You know, this kind of again,
this unearned generosity with which people were interpreting my actions
they never would have guessed who I really was, which
was the gringo, the foreigner, the privileged one. So we
(36:22):
settled in and watched the game, and I drank my
free beer with my friend in perfect safety. And I
benefited from his blindness, of course, because naturally, logically or
for everyone around him, around us, he was a vulnerable one.
And if he was a vulnerable one, then I had
to be the one protecting him and knowing I've never
felt anything so absurd, to be honest. Yeah, that's my story.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
Wow, what a beautiful story of the unexpected ways that
privilege and vulnerability interact. You know, the vulnerable one is
the knowledgeable one and vice versa. That's just that story,
(37:11):
like so many And I know that I know that
you hate it when I compliment you, but like so
many of your stories, it has it has such complexity,
and just when you're just when you're comfortable, you get
uncomfortable again. Just when you think you've got it, you
don't have it again. And I've loved listening to do
you tell Stories for thirty five years, but that's one
(37:32):
of my favorites.
Speaker 1 (37:33):
Thank you man, Thank you man. Yeah, it was, it was.
It was a real learning experience, like all reporting trips are,
but this one in a very specific way. I want
to mention something which really awesome about that trip. You know,
I said at the beginning that one of the great
things about having a fixers you look for a fixer
who's cooler than you. So the first night we arrived,
he was like, hey, man, I hope you don't mind,
(37:54):
but we have to go to my friend's house because
we need to sing backup vocals for his punk band.
And I was like, oh, sure, yeah, no problem. So
this guy picks us up and we go up into
the hills of and we go to this house and
they've set up you know, they're hanging mics from the
ceiling and there's drummers there, and uh, this punk band.
(38:16):
They're recording a song called which is total shit is
what it means. And what we need to do is
all gather around these microphones and it's like maybe a
dozen of his friends and they're all super cool, like
way cooler than me, just so cool. Everyone's like total badass.
And then the band and the music is everywhere, and
they're like food and there's drink and everyone's like smoking.
(38:37):
It's awesome. And uh and what we have to do
is like the leader of the band is like, you know,
one D three, you know, and we have to do that, like,
you know, maybe twenty five times. And then once we're done,
he's like, okay, I got it, Like let's get drunk,
and then everyone just gets smashed and uh and and
(38:58):
I was like, wow, all right, I really picked the
right fixer here, because this is a great week. It's
pretty great. Later on I will send you the link
to the video for and you can see in the
scroll the credits is my name, which is uh, you know,
probably the key accomplishment in my musical life. It's a
it's a it's a great song. It's a banger. I
(39:19):
gotta say, it's a real banger. And the video is great.
What is Jorge up to these days, if you don't
mind me asking works at a radio station in the
town of Progress, at Progress, where he's from, and he
has his own journalism project actually with friends. They help
run this radio station. And you're doing quite well. Yeah,
(39:40):
that's great. Thanks to the update. Absolutely uh So. Shout
out to Jorge, Shout out to everyone who has been
listening and sending us emails. We're gonna save emails because
we're gonna do a mail bag episode pretty soon, so
keep them coming. We're not gonna read any today, but
as always, away endpod at gmail dot com. Also, please
(40:00):
recommend the pod, leave reviews, tell your friends, share the clips,
and above all, enjoy your football m
Hello, and welcome to the Away and I'm John Green.
I'm Danielle Alerconne. How's it going, man, it's going great today.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
I'm back from England where I was watching my football
team AFC Wimbledon end their season with a four nil pummeling.
They were on the nil side of that four nil pummeling,
but it didn't matter because we stayed up.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Wow. How did they celebrate a four to oh drubbing? Well?
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Pretty good? Actually pretty good. It was a party atmosphere.
Every time the other team scored a goal, the fans
would sing don staying up olay ola. So yeah, the
vibes were great, vibes were immaculate. It was hard to
ruin that day and nothing could. So it was a
great time. I want to talk to you, though, Daniel,
about something that's been on my heart. As people say,
(00:55):
hit me. I want to talk to you about two
pieces of art actually, and I'm going to connect them
to football the best way I can. But the first
is this conceptual work by the artist Tea monkey Pa.
She made this piece called TV for Chickens. This is
about twenty years ago and it was a piece of
art video art shown to chickens the chickens that it
(01:16):
was shown to lived in small cages, like the vast
majority of chickens do, and what it showed on the
TV screens was video of happy chickens, like pecking through
endless emerald fields of green. I guess that's redundant. All
emerald fields are fields of green. But you get my point.
It's very dark work of art.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
I wasn't going to correct you on that, but yes, yes.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
It's a very dark work of art. But I think
about it a lot when I watch football, because football
for me on TV is also you know, it's a
literally green field of masterfully coordinated humans running about in
not a dissimilar way to the way we've been running
(02:00):
around fields for like over one hundred thousand years, right,
Like being outside playing silly games together is a fundamental
human thing that goes way way back. And when I
am sitting on my couch watching this big green field
with people playing on it, on some level, I'm watching
(02:20):
TV for chickens.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
But for me, right.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Yes, and I love love televised soccer, like there is
something better about being there in real life, of course,
Like there's no question that football is best appreciated live
it's beautiful to be in community. You get to share
your love with thousands of other people, you get to
sing in concert with them, all that stuff. Plus you
(02:47):
see a lot when you watch the game live that
you don't see when you watch on TV because when
you watch on TV, you're mostly watching the ball, and
when you watch in person, it's much easier to watch
like the formations and so on. But I still love
watching soccer on TV. Like some of my favorite memories
Liverpool's comeback in Istanbul in two thousand and five, Leicester
City's wild run to the Premier League title in twenty sixteen,
(03:10):
those were primarily TV based experiences for me, and they
were great experiences. Even when I was alone watching the game,
I still loved it, and not just because of TV
for chickens, but partly because it's TV for chickens for sure,
and so.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
It is really I feel like there's I feel like
there's a butt coming. Man, there's a butt coming. Okay,
what is it?
Speaker 2 (03:33):
But something is on the edge of ruining the experience
of watching televised soccer of TV for chickens for humans,
because there is one way to ruin the game, and
that is to put frickin' advertisements in it. And I'm
not talking about like the little Toyota logo up by
(03:53):
the score bug. I'm not talking to you about the
two minutes of stoppage time brought to you by Lexis.
I am talking about actual advertisements that interrupt the game
while the clock is moving, that take you away from
the literal field and put you in a GLP one
ad or whatever it is. The whole pleasure of football
(04:13):
is that it is forty five straight minutes of green grass,
not interrupted by advertisements about psoriasis treatments. And there are
strong rumors, first seen by me when you sent them
to me in the Athletic, that this year's World Cup
may have ads during the so called hydration breaks. Now,
these hydration breaks, Daniel, as you know, are key television watching.
(04:36):
Which players drink just water, which drink the weird pink
stuff like these are big questions that I want answers to,
and I can't get those answers if I'm watching an
ad for some obscure drug. Europeans listening to this are like, what,
you can't advertise drugs, Oh, yes you can. You sure
can advertise drugs.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
I thought Sky Rizzy was a rapper, but it turns
out it's a medicine. Yeah, you sure can. So let
me play Devil's Advocate here.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
John, Yeah, this is going to take me to my
second piece of art that I want to talk about.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
But go ahead and play Devil's Out. No, no, but
Devil's Advocate being like you know, player welfare. It is
hot in North America.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
For the hydration breaks. I just want to be able
to watch them. I think they contain key information from
my experience. Okay, okay, I understand, I understand you. You
are pro players drinking, whether it's the pink stuff or
the green stuff or the water, but you want to
see them. You want the groving drone camera over them
because also we should say, you know, it's interesting parenthetical here,
(05:42):
but like coaching in football is done in these little
bursts before the game and at halftime and then like
whatever you managed to shout to like you know, whatever
winger is on your line, or if you make a
substitute and you bring him in. But a lot of
good managers are going to use as hydration breaks for
pep talks or little tactical tweaks, and you want the
(06:04):
camera on that you can see Carlo Angelot with a
cigar in his arms around Vinnie Junior and the whole
Brazilian squad, and you want it.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
You want to be there. You don't want to go
off to a commercial. I want to see Pocheccino's huge
gesticulations as he explains why the US men's national team
has organized itself so poorly and so on. That is
exactly what I want, and that is what I think
I deserve, because this is my TV for chickens, and
interrupting it with progressive advertisements like progressive insurance advertisements about
(06:33):
the Lexus December to Remember or whatever. You can't do
that while the clock is ticking. You can do it
at halftime. You can do it at the end of
the game. You can do it.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Before the game. You can't do it while the clock
is ticking. That is my forty five minutes of freedom
and piece and TV for chickens. Now, I understand that
I live in a world that is funded by advertising.
I understand that this podcast is funded by advertising. I
understand that the Internet that I use is funded by advertising.
I understand that. But this brings me to my second
(07:00):
piece of art. Daniel have you ever heard William Faulkner's
resignation letter from the Post Office.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
No, I have not. Well, this is you are about
to experience one of the great letters ever written in
human history.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
Oh God, I can't wait. I will read it to
you in its entirety. As long as I live under
the capitalistic system, I expect to have my life influenced
by the demands of moneyed people. But I will be
damned if I propose to be at the beck and
call of every itinerant scoundrel who has two cents to
invest in a postage stamp. This, sir, is my resignation.
(07:37):
So that is precisely how I feel about advertisements during
the hydration breaks, Daniel, I feel that I have been.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Pushed to the edge.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
I expect to live under a capitalistic system where I
am influenced by money to people, but this is a
bridge too far for me.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
You know what. My dog is very strongly about this
as well.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
Uh, John, Uh, if I may, you are invoking the
great William Faulkner in this, Uh you know, righteous diet tribe.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
And yet are you resigning? Actually, are you telling me
that you're not gonna watch the World Cup because they're
going to show a Coca Cola commercial during the hydration breaks,
or they're gonna be like this hydration break brought to
you by Coca Cola, and like now here's like the
Polar Bears and and like you know, the the people
you know have give them the world of coke or
all that. You're not you know, So what are you
(08:36):
resigning from? Man? I'm not resigning. That's the thing. Man.
They got me. They got me.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
They can monetize as much of my attention as they
want because they got me. They got me in I
love football too much. Yeah, but I wouldn't. I will say,
I don't think I would have fallen as deeply in
love with it if there were, if there were ads
during the hydration breaks. That's my TV for chickens, man,
and I I need it. I need to see that
big green field and the people running on it.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
Yeah, I agree with you. I think. I think that
one of the pleasures of soccer is that the clock
doesn't stop, that it keeps moving. It's like a metaphor
for life, the inexorable passage of time. And I enjoy
that a great deal. And I think the where the
where we see the cynicism of FIFA is in the
fact that the hydration breaks are also occurring in say Atlanta,
(09:24):
where the stadium is air conditioned, and so that's not
the hydrogen breaks are not sort of weather dependent hydration breaks,
which I think we all agree that there should be
if the temperatures is dangerous, you know, but it's not.
It's not. So that's where you can really tell, sort
of like the you know, that's how you can see
what the cards are actually playing. Yeah, it's just starting
(09:46):
to feel close to having a commercial break in the
middle of the game, which for me brings it closer
to basketball and American football and baseball, which are so
inundated with advertisements as live experiences that they really aren't
that good of a television product. Like obviously, lots of
people still watch them. I still watch them to some extent,
(10:07):
but like I much prefer soccer because it has that
sense of openness and like you say, the clock never
stops running. There's a proposal out there, especially in sort
of lower league English football, to institute a rule where
the game lasts fifty five minutes, but the clock stops
every time the ball goes out of bounds, and I
think this would be a horrible rule. I understand what
(10:29):
the purpose of it is is to try to prevent
time wasting and and and it's true there's a lot
of time wasting in football. But I really like that
the clock never stops running and that just there's there.
You tack on the extra time at the extra time. Yeah, no,
I love that. This is going to be an awkward
segue to our ad break, John, I just want to
(10:53):
mention that, so we'll definitely support our advertisers. Just you know, understand.
And this isn't TV for chickens, Daniel, this is a podcast.
It's different. There you go. It is different. It is different,
and I'm just a spare you the embarrassment. I'm gonna
throw to the ad break. You don't have nice. So
(11:15):
with all that in mind, thank you for that rant. John.
We'll be right back after a quick break.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
All right, Daniel, We're back at the away end and
it's time to do a deep dive into I don't
think I listed this country in particular.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
On my list of World Cup teams I'm rooting.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
For, but I have to say, of all the underdogs,
my favorite underdog, the underdog. I'll be rooting for the
hardest in this year's World Cup is Haiti. I asked
a Haitian friend of mine in the run up to
recording this episode what his hopes are for Haiti this
World Cup, and he had a very interesting answer. He
(12:02):
didn't say anything about like beating Scotland or drawing Brazil
or anything. He said, I just want the country to
come together and the diaspora to come together for a
few weeks, a few weeks of a break. As I'm
sure you know, Haiti has been in tremendous turmoil since
the twenty twenty one assassination of their president. Gang violence
(12:23):
is a nationwide problem, but especially challenging in the capital
city of Porta Prince. I know of healthcare workers who
live at the hospitals where they work because traveling to
and from work is so unsafe. It is a chaotic
and terrifying situation. And not for the first time in
recent or indeed ancient history, Haiti's cries have fallen on
(12:44):
deaf years internationally. And this is a nation that has
been systemically impoverished for centuries by the rich world, and
now it is suffering tremendously, And I think that's important
background for understanding why this World Cup qualification means so
much to Haitians, whether they live inside of Haiti or
outside of it. It's Haiti's first World Cup qualification since
(13:07):
nineteen seventy four. They are the only Caribbean nation to
have qualified for two World Cups, also the only Caribbean
nation to win a CONCACAFT tournament title back in nineteen
seventy three. They made it to the semifinals of the
Gold Cup in twenty nineteen. And they're kind of having
a second golden age. They had this one golden age
in the nineteen seventies when they qualified for the World Cup,
(13:28):
won that CONCACAFF tournament, and now they're back. They have been,
you know, a strong footballing nation relative to conca CAF
for a long time. But it is not a fluke
that Haiti qualified for the World Cup this year. You know,
they had to beat some really good teams and you
also have to remember that they had to do so
(13:49):
without being able to play any of their qualification matches
at home in Haiti, and so they have no home
field advantage during the entire qualification process. You know, John
where they played, Yeah, so they played in neutral sites.
They played in Currossow most of their home games and
(14:10):
in games they really needed to win. They had to
win their last two games, and they won both of them.
They beat both Costa Rica and Nicaragua in Currosow and
other things had to go their way. But to beat
Costa Rica in Nicaraguay is no joke, like those are
proper footballing countries. And that's why I think Haiti might
(14:33):
just have a chance to do something at this World
Cup other than just show up, because they've already experienced
the intense, intense pressure of a neutral site match where
it's all or nothing. There is a problem, however, which
is that they are in an incredibly difficult group. They
(14:56):
are in a group with Brazil, Morocco and Scotland. So
Brazil is obviously, Brazil, Morocco is arguably.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
Although you and I would not argue.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
It, the reigning African champions, and Scotland. You know, Scotland
are good ish, they have some they have some really
good players. But that's that's where Haiti is going to
be looking, I think, to get a result, and if
they could win that game, they'll probably qualify for the
knockout rounds. As we've talked about before most teams are
(15:27):
going to qualify for the knockout round, so a lot
of teams there's gonna there's gonna be some weird knockout
round qualifications. I think that's also, of course, where Scotland
is going to be looking for points, is up against Haiti,
and so that that'll be a really interesting game.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
I think.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
I think Brazil and Morocco are some tough hills to climb.
Their recent results have been pretty good. They tied with Iceland.
Iceland's still got a strong team and they lost one
nil to Tunisia. You know, they play Cape Verdet right
before the World Cup as their warm up match, and
(16:01):
then their first matches against Scotland. So I think I
think Haiti will know early on how their World.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
Cup is going to look.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Are they there, you know, just to celebrate qualifying for
the World Cup, which is a huge accomplishment in and
of itself, or are they there to try to get
something from the tournament. But yeah, I mean it's going
to be I'm just so excited that they qualified. I
think it's such a huge accomplishment. I think it's so
hard to qualify without being able to play any games
at home, and I really I'll really be rooting for
(16:31):
Haiti in this tournament. I think I think they're they're
they're they're one of the most likable underdogs of the
World Cup.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Yeah. No, that's great. They're playing I was just looking
this up. They're playing Scotland in Boston. Yeah, that's a
that's going to be a very interesting game and I'm
sure that the diaspora will be out in full force
supporting their team. It's going to feel like a home game,
I believe because of bets of that presence. Yeah. Yeah,
Scotland travel pretty well, but I think that's going to
(17:02):
feel like more like a home game, probably than playing
in kuras Al. Yeah, probably so, probably. So. I just
think of all the love of the Haitians going up
from New York. They're gonna go. I mean, it's gonna
be it's gonna be great. I wish them a lot
of luck with no disrespecting lots of love to the
Scotts obviously. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
No, we're not trying to pick favorites here because we
need all all of our listeners.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Yeah, that's what it's about. Really. Yeah, no, and but John,
do the Haitian players on the national team, how many
of them actually, like they don't even live in Haiti.
They can't, right, They're coming from all over the world
sort of like.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
I think only one of them currently plays in Haiti.
And even you know, like we talk about this all
the time, but like national teams are comprised of people
who often may not have been born in the nation
where they represent. They you know, national ties are incredibly complicated.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
But even by.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
The standards of contemporary international football, like Haitian players play
everywhere from Tehran to Wolverhampton to Quito to Dallas. I
will say that I'm pretty hard on MLS, Daniel, because
I think it's a monopolistic enterprise that primarily exists to
(18:23):
bolster the assets of billionaires rather than to be like
real community clubs. And because they're franchises, they can move,
as Vancouver may be experiencing soon. And it's really difficult
to you know, trust in the community nature of a
football club when it can theoretically be wrested from you,
(18:45):
as the Columbus Crew almost experienced, as you know, and
as happens a lot in other Major league sports in
the United States. So I can be critical of MLS.
I will say, I think MLS has been hugely important
for developing American soccer players and also footballers in the Caribbean.
Like of the current Haitian national team, I think seven
(19:06):
of them currently play in MLS and several more used to.
And so this is a great example of how MLS
can develop, you know, talent around the US, the Caribbean,
the CONCACAF region. And I think that's worth acknowledging. Absolutely, Yeah, great,
(19:31):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
I love it. I will I mean, I would love
to see Haiti get something out of this tournament.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
But sometimes maybe that's just a goal. Maybe that's just
an amazing like I don't know, I think the goal
has to be. This is something I've been thinking about
as a men's national team fan that I need to
reset my expectations that like, winning the World Cup is
not what a success looks like for the US men's
national team. Having one statement signature win is what success
looks like. And that could be in the round of
(19:58):
thirty two, you know, and make it to the round
of sixteen, and that's a great outcome and we lose
to Brazil or Germany or whoever, and you know, so
it goes I think similarly, like I remember, I remember
during the African Cup of Nations, not this most recent time,
but the one before sier Leone qualified for the African
(20:18):
Cup of Nations and they had this nil nil draw
and like people were out on the streets of Freetown
celebrating a nil nil draw right right, one point from
one tournament was huge because that's just where Sierra Leoni
and football is at. And so I think, you know,
I think everybody has to set their metrics for success appropriately.
(20:40):
That said, when we listen back to this segment after
Haiti makes the semi final, I'm going to look like
a real joy kill.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
I know. It reminds me actually of this great documentary
that I think I mentioned on here before. I'll mention
it again. It's called Uno and it's from win Ondura's
qualified and the one goal that they scored in a
tournament where they got battered, absolutely battered, but in one
of the games was like eleven to one. And this
is the stort of that one goal.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
I do want to highlight one Haitian player, Dunckson's Nazon,
who plays in Tehran. Now, he's had a long career.
He's the leading goal scorer. He played in France, he
played at Wolverhampton Wanderers, he played in France again, he
played in I think Bulgaria, so he's been all over.
(21:28):
My favorite team he went to was Oldham Athletic. I've
always had a soft spot for Oldham.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
I went there.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
I went there once as a Wimbledon fan and had
a good time. But anyway, he has had a long
career and is currently their top goal scorer. I think
he's had forty five goals playing for the Haitian national team.
And also our producer Sean just pointed out that he
just got the key to the city in North Miami
(21:55):
Beach for everything he's done for the Haitian community.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
That's wonderful. I would love to know, Like I I
really admire these the arc of these lives. When you've
played in so many places, it must be such an
interesting and crazy way to get to know the world.
I can write playing in a Haitian guy playing in Tehran,
like now, like what what must that be? Like? Right?
(22:22):
I would love to sit and hear the story of
that life, you know. I think we should also keep
up the tradition of mentioning some writers from Haiti and
and I guess I think for you know, English readers,
I guess I would I would go with the unticat
who I'm sure you've read Krick Crack. She has a
(22:43):
bunch of great novels that I that I really recommend,
and his uh really beautiful essays that we're posting New
Yorker now and then. So that's another another way to
support the Haitian team. I guess team literature obviously. Yeah.
I love that you're on team literature, Daniel. I love this.
I love this tradition in literature. Yeah, it's a great tradition.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
And I love that when you never recommend like pulp
writers either, you're never recommending like some some pulp writer.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
It's always proper capital L literature with you. So I'm
just trying to keep the away end classy. John.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
Yeah, let's take a quick break and uh, I'm gonna
tell you a story about uh about gonna do this.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
We'll come back, all right, John, We're back on the
way end. So I'm gonna tell you a story about
I'll do this. But I want to ask you first,
(23:40):
do you know what a fixer is? Uh?
Speaker 2 (23:43):
Yeah, one of my good friends from college is a fixer, Okay,
where I don't think I should say more than that.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
All right, okay, all right, all right.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
Yeah, everybody needs a fixer, right, Like when you travel
for work in interesting places or challenging places, you generally
get a fixer.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
Yeah, and you get a fixer kind of when you're
especially this is you know, for journal there's I guess
there's different kinds of fixers, you know. And there are
fixers who kind of keep journalists, foreign journalists from making
complete assays of themselves, right, kind of orient them around
the country, keep them safe, like don't go here, don't
(24:26):
go there, this is dumb, you know, help you find sources.
You know, it's a it's a job that lots of
local journalists do, like in addition to their local journalism,
they'll also sort of work with foreign journalists to do this.
And so I want to tell you a story about
a friend of mine who's a fixer. He became my
friend when he was my fixer. I should say it
starts around in twenty seventeen. I decided I want to
(24:48):
go to and Dudas. I didn't have like really any
high minded reasons. I was just curious, you know, at
the time, Oh Dudas was the most violent country in
Latin America. And I run this Benish language pod cast,
and I just kind of wanted to go there. I
wanted to see what it was like. I was specifically interested
in young people, like how, how what it's like to
grow up in a place like this. And I kept
(25:10):
thinking of the you know, the the Cormick McCarthy novel
No Country for Old Men, Like I had just had
this this phrase in my head that was like no
Country for young Men, and and I just wanted to
go there. I just wanted to see it. So I
happened to be in Nicaragua, and so I took a
bus from Manawa to see In the weeks leading up
to this trip, I did what anyone would do, which
(25:31):
is you try to find a fixer, and I started
calling around and I eventually got connected with this guy
named Jorge. I found out that he'd never worked as
a fixer before, but I really liked him. We were
just talking on WhatsApp. He'd worked at a radio station,
he'd done, you know, covered youth violence, and he knew
a lot of people, and so we were sending messages
(25:51):
on WhatsApp. Mostly voice memos actually, just to nail down
the details like the dates of my trip and his
fee and that kind of thing. And of course I
was curious, like, who is the guy that I'm gonna
be hanging out with while I'm in Honduras and so
on his WhatsApp image it was like him, He's wearing sunglasses,
he got long hair, and he was playing the saxophone.
He looked like a rock star. Wow. And I was like,
(26:13):
I was like, dope, all right, coolah, let's go.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
Because the dream really is to have a fixer who
also can play Cold Trane, right, I mean that's the dream.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
Yeah, or just a fixer I think honestly, a fixer
who's cooler than you are is the goal, right, because
most of them are My friend from college certainly is yeah.
Because also I mean at at at my essence John,
you know this, like I'm a super dork, you know, like, hmmm,
if the like if the kind of constant references to
(26:46):
like literature has not like clued in our readers into
like that's how I interface with the world in a
lot of ways is through literature and books and art.
That's true. That's true, then it's I should just state
it plainly, like, that's mostly how I think about the
world through stories, and often through stories that have been written.
And I like talking to people who've done things and
who had no more interesting lives than I have, and
(27:07):
so that's part of my I feel like my job
as a journalist has been that. Right. So anyway, so
I'm getting on this bus to Managua, and I'm like,
you know, all I have is this little kind of
like thumbnail image from the WhatsApp, and so I was like, okay, well,
you know, just so we can just you know, so
you know what I look like. I'm not super tall,
I have kind of like this way crazy hair, you know,
(27:29):
that's it, you know, like I'm wearing whatever nonsense I
usually wear. And then he sent me this voice note, Yes,
I and Rolo is in a person so if I
still there, Okay, so done. I don't know how much
(27:53):
of that you caught, but some of our listener speak
Spanish and they may have understood, but anyways, I'll translate.
So what basically says is that it'll be easy for
me to recognize him because he'll be the blind guy
at the bus station, right, Okay, So it's been years
and I have a certain amount of distance, and I
can admit that the situation felt ridiculous to me, Like
(28:17):
I'm going to the most violent country in Latin America.
I'm a you know, I'm a journalist, I've been places, whatever,
but this is like, you know, not a place that
I've been before. And my guide as I go to
the most dangerous parts of the most dangerous cities in
the most dangerous country in Latin America is going to
be a guy who's blind. So I'm like, okay. But
(28:37):
it was like, honestly, man, I felt like I couldn't
say anything because it was like I was literally getting
on the bus and I decided that I just had
to barrel on I get there. And in fact, obviously
it was very easy to recognize Jork and he met
me at the bus station and he had this big,
welcoming smile, and you know, I was just like, okay,
let's go. And I made a choice mostly out of embarrassment,
(28:58):
which is that I just didn't mention it. Yeah, which
is like a weird thing. And I'm not like I
just like it was like isaif I hadn't noticed, I
was just like, whoa you know, which I think says
more about me and like sort of like kind of
like broaching something like I just was like, oh, well,
let's just you know, pretend that this is not an
issue or a concern, and you know, we spent the
(29:18):
next few days cris crossing things he got about, going
from one interview or another, and we became friends, and
I learned a lot of stuff about and they're really
important things that sort of like explained that who he is.
First of all, that he was born blind, and secondly,
from a very young age, he had kind of promised
himself that he would be self reliant. When his parents
split up, he felt like his dad didn't want him,
(29:40):
so his dad took his sister. And felt mostly that
his dad didn't want him because he was a burden, right,
he said, with his mom, who was this really strong
willed woman who had to work super hard to put
food on the table. And he decided a super young
age and he was never going to be a burden
to anybody that it was he would never let his
blind as be an impediment to anything. So he grew
in the neighborhood, playing soccer, you know, hanging out with
(30:03):
like just being like a normal kid. When he was twelve,
he got a job as an assistant at a mechanics shop,
and he learned to take things apart by touch. He
could recognize the tools and their size, and he was
just kind of an assistant at a mechanics shop, and
he loved the challenge and he loved really bringing home
money to his family, to his mom because he just
again didn't want to be a burden to her anyway
(30:23):
and wanted to contribute. A couple of years later, he
did what so many young men, young Central American men do,
which is he headed north. He was only fourteen years old,
and he traveled without a cane, without sunglasses, and with
the help of a friend, he even managed to jump
on the Beast. I don't know if you know what
Labistia is. The Beast is this migrant train that runs
(30:44):
from the south of Mexico to the center of Mexico
where many migrants just right on top to sort of
get across Mexico. He was arrested or detained by Mexican
authorities in Tampico and then and deported and sent back
to Wandudas. It was disappointing, but in other ways it
was a hugeccoplishment because he was so self reliant and
(31:06):
so self possessed that a lot of people he was
traveling with never even realized he was blind. And when
he got home, he didn't even tell his mom that
he'd tried to emigrate. She was like, where you been.
He was like, I've been around, Yeah, so this is
a really incredible I've enough to stuff. Yeah I was
gone for a week, you know. Yeah. I mean I
mentioned all this John because I want you to understand
(31:27):
just what an incredible guy or his he had a
by necessity developed this really intuitive sense of the world,
of understanding of people, and I saw it on display
when we would go meet people that he had helped
connect me with. He told me that from the moment
he shakes her hand, he's like trying to understand what
kind of person you are. And you know, that's like
the essence of being a journalist right now. In certain
(31:49):
practical ways, it was a challenge, Like we started to
work and something really unusual would happen. For example, we'd
show up in this neighborhood and I'm like the foreigner,
I'm scared all the time. I'm like trying to make
sense of what I'm seeing. I've heard all these horror stories,
and so I'd look around and I'd be like, Okay,
is it dangerous here? And then he would be like,
(32:11):
I don't know, describe it, and it really it had
this remarkable impact on me, John, because I had to
pay attention to things in a really specific way. So
I start telling him. I would describe the graffiti on
the walls and like the you know, the people standing around,
like the you know, the kids, and what color shoes
(32:31):
they were wearing, and like you know, the tattoos I saw,
and like the guards, what kind of weapons they had,
you know. Like I was just super observant, and I
would whisper it almost like I was like sharing this
secret with like like you know, an intimate friend. And
we had become close friends at that point. And then
most of time would listen and be like, hmmm, nah,
it's not dangerous. We're fine. And this is where it
(32:52):
gets super deep for me, John, because he was the right.
Actually we were fine, and this is what I had
not understood, especially me. I was totally fine. Uh, And
here's where it's it's it's something that I didn't understand
the first but he explained it to me. He said
that he had anticipated this when you're with a blind person.
As a sighted person, everyone kind of observes you with
(33:15):
this like gentle admiration. You know. Yeah, Tigos Gota was
a dangerous city. But when I had Jorge with me
and he's, you know, we're walking around town, he's, you know,
holding my shoulder, like I have this kind of force
field because everyone's looking at me with with you know,
like they're like they're the benevolence and they're they're like, oh,
(33:36):
look at that guy. He's so kind, he's so generous.
And I was walking around in this absurd, unearned protective bubble. Right. So,
in fact I had arrived in TINGUSI gotba imagining that
like my fixer should be like this super tough guy
who like streets smart, knew this and that and blah blah.
And in fact, the safest I possibly could have been
(33:58):
was walking around these really tough names and talking to
really you know, tough looking people with Jor on my shoulder.
Because it was just like, like I said, like having
this force field. This was never more clear John than
we went to the local soccer stadium. It happened to
be while I was in town the final of the
Duran League. The game was Mottagwa versus Progresso. We got
(34:18):
tickets and you know, we walked to the stadium. Walking
to the stadium is something that American fans don't know
anything about, but it's a really marvelous thing.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
It's crazy, it's such a it's such a great way
to do it. You can do it in Portland. I
saw people walk to the stadium in Portland. That's the
only time I've ever seen it.
Speaker 1 (34:36):
Yeah, it's just like as you get closer to the stadium,
what you see and feel is like like like tributaries
gathering into a large stream and then a river. People
and fans, and the closer you get, the energy and
people are coming from every angle and different train stations
and they're walking. And I've seen it in so many cities.
It's really a special thing. It isn't quite the same
(34:59):
when you, you know, drive to the stadium and park
in a you know, acres away from the stadium in
a large parking lot. Anyway, that's a parenthetical that has
not only do with the story. I've think it's already
been established John that I'm not a particularly brave person.
This walk was one of the most intimidating walks I've
ever taken, and I don't think I've ever felt like
(35:19):
more of an outsider in any place that I've ever been.
But it was soon incredibly clear that everything had told
me about my privilege visa his blindness was one hundred
percent true. Because these dudes would like crazy tats and
like scary generally like intimidating personas, were coming up to me,
and they were clapping me on the back, congratulating me.
(35:41):
When we finally got to our seats, people were bringing
us beers, and I was the beneficiary again of all
this unearned good will, just because I was with Jorge.
He was the one showing me around. He knew everything
about the local league, about the players and their styles,
the tactics, the history. He'd been to the stadium before.
But of course, for everyone around us, that possibility just
(36:01):
never crossed their minds. Everyone must have been wondering about
our relationship, about who I was to him, like a brother,
a cousin, a benevolent friend. You know, this kind of again,
this unearned generosity with which people were interpreting my actions
they never would have guessed who I really was, which
was the gringo, the foreigner, the privileged one. So we
(36:22):
settled in and watched the game, and I drank my
free beer with my friend in perfect safety. And I
benefited from his blindness, of course, because naturally, logically or
for everyone around him, around us, he was a vulnerable one.
And if he was a vulnerable one, then I had
to be the one protecting him and knowing I've never
felt anything so absurd, to be honest. Yeah, that's my story.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
Wow, what a beautiful story of the unexpected ways that
privilege and vulnerability interact. You know, the vulnerable one is
the knowledgeable one and vice versa. That's just that story,
(37:11):
like so many And I know that I know that
you hate it when I compliment you, but like so
many of your stories, it has it has such complexity,
and just when you're just when you're comfortable, you get
uncomfortable again. Just when you think you've got it, you
don't have it again. And I've loved listening to do
you tell Stories for thirty five years, but that's one
(37:32):
of my favorites.
Speaker 1 (37:33):
Thank you man, Thank you man. Yeah, it was, it was.
It was a real learning experience, like all reporting trips are,
but this one in a very specific way. I want
to mention something which really awesome about that trip. You know,
I said at the beginning that one of the great
things about having a fixers you look for a fixer
who's cooler than you. So the first night we arrived,
he was like, hey, man, I hope you don't mind,
(37:54):
but we have to go to my friend's house because
we need to sing backup vocals for his punk band.
And I was like, oh, sure, yeah, no problem. So
this guy picks us up and we go up into
the hills of and we go to this house and
they've set up you know, they're hanging mics from the
ceiling and there's drummers there, and uh, this punk band.
(38:16):
They're recording a song called which is total shit is
what it means. And what we need to do is
all gather around these microphones and it's like maybe a
dozen of his friends and they're all super cool, like
way cooler than me, just so cool. Everyone's like total badass.
And then the band and the music is everywhere, and
they're like food and there's drink and everyone's like smoking.
(38:37):
It's awesome. And uh and what we have to do
is like the leader of the band is like, you know,
one D three, you know, and we have to do that, like,
you know, maybe twenty five times. And then once we're done,
he's like, okay, I got it, Like let's get drunk,
and then everyone just gets smashed and uh and and
(38:58):
I was like, wow, all right, I really picked the
right fixer here, because this is a great week. It's
pretty great. Later on I will send you the link
to the video for and you can see in the
scroll the credits is my name, which is uh, you know,
probably the key accomplishment in my musical life. It's a
it's a it's a great song. It's a banger. I
(39:19):
gotta say, it's a real banger. And the video is great.
What is Jorge up to these days, if you don't
mind me asking works at a radio station in the
town of Progress, at Progress, where he's from, and he
has his own journalism project actually with friends. They help
run this radio station. And you're doing quite well. Yeah,
(39:40):
that's great. Thanks to the update. Absolutely uh So. Shout
out to Jorge, Shout out to everyone who has been
listening and sending us emails. We're gonna save emails because
we're gonna do a mail bag episode pretty soon, so
keep them coming. We're not gonna read any today, but
as always, away endpod at gmail dot com. Also, please
(40:00):
recommend the pod, leave reviews, tell your friends, share the clips,
and above all, enjoy your football m
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