MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - Guesly Dervil had just played his final game as a member of the West Virginia University football team in the city he now calls home. After four years with the Mountaineers, his career came to an end on the first day of 2010.

Just over a week after the game, on a Tuesday, he sat in his Jacksonville, Fla. home watching television a few days before he would head back to Morgantown for his final semester at WVU.

That’s when he first got the news.

“I was flipping through the channels and saw ‘Haiti’ going across the little ticker and I was like, ‘Hold up, what’s going on?’”

Then, all at once, his childhood – all the people, all the places, all the memories – came rushing back. He was overwhelmed by the images of his homeland of Haiti, the only world he knew growing up, unrecognizable through the lenses that captured the devastating aftermath of a 7.0 earthquake.

But then, for Dervil, Haiti had always been unrecognizable when he saw it through a lens rather than as he had with his own eyes years ago.

Sent Sizàn

Dervil spent the days of his youth in Sainte Suzanne, a municipality of around 21,000 inhabitants in Haiti’s Nord-Est Department.

He grew up with Creole and some French being spoken in his home and with his friends, learning English later in life. In his native Creole, his home was called Sent Sizàn, and as far as Dervil is concerned, everything a child could hope for was his for the taking.

“I had fun growing up and I remember going to the beaches, staying out there swimming, playing a lot of soccer,” he says.

If you told a young Guesly Dervil he would one day start as a true freshman on a Division I American football team, he wouldn’t have said you were lying. He just would have asked what American football was.

His dreams were to play soccer, perhaps for the Haitian national team, or basketball. Football wouldn’t enter his mind for many years to come.

When Dervil was 11, his mother decided it was time to leave Haiti behind and move he and his older brother, Guerlin, to the United States. They took up residence in Miami, Fla. and eventually settled in the more northern Jacksonville.

Even though he had physically left Haiti, Dervil never forgot his past. After all, the majority of his family and friends remained on the island of Hispaniola. The thought of his past brought happiness and fond memories, but every time he saw Haiti on the news in Florida, it was for something negative.

“You have to go there and actually live it,” says Dervil. “You can’t just judge a country off one bad or poor neighborhood; you’ve got to look at the whole thing. You can’t go down there with a camera and film the poorest part and then come back and show everybody, because everybody will think that’s all it is. 

 

"Haiti's a beautiful place."

The French colony had once been the wealthiest in the Caribbean, but since gaining its independence in 1804, it has been plagued by political violence and has since become the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere.

The majority of its 8 million residents live on less than $1 per day; unemployment is close to 80 percent, and more than half the population is under 21 years old.

“If you want to know where a country is going, you have to go back in time and see where it has been,” says Dervil. “You’ve got to go back in their history to see why Haiti is heading in the direction that they’re heading and why they have the reputation they have.”

January 12, 2010

“Wow, I can’t see this happening,” Dervil said as he watched the images of destruction flash across the screen.

“When I saw that, I just started thinking about the people and that I’ve been there and I know what they go through on a daily basis and I know the environment and the atmosphere and I know life’s tough.”

As tough as he and his family had ever felt life had been on them in the past, it had just dealt them the most vicious blow of all. Dervil and his family in the states immediately picked up the phone to call back to Sainte Suzanne to get in touch with those who remained in Haiti.

“We were making a bunch of phone calls, but we couldn’t get through to anybody,” he says. “It wasn’t until a couple days after the first major earthquake that we finally got in touch with some people. Some people we don’t know about and some people are all right.”

Among those who are all right is Dervil’s older sister, Guerline. After days of not knowing where she was or if she had even made it through the quake, he finally got the chance to speak with her on the phone.

“When I heard her voice, you can imagine the relief I had,” says Dervil. “She was terrified. It’s hard right now, you know? I told her to just stay positive and put your faith in God and keep talking to him and everything will be all right.

“One of the things I told her is whenever there’s a dark night, there’s always a brighter day after that. It doesn’t matter how hard things get, just keep your faith in God, and keep your head up and you’ll be all right.”

Dervil also finds himself asking for strength and guidance for his people, but sometimes the thought of what is happening in Haiti is too much to bear.

“Every night before I go to bed, I say my prayers, but I try not to think about it, because when I think about it, it hurts me.”

Rebuild, Revive, Renew

Dervil is anticipating the day that he can return to Haiti to physically help the people and the land that so desperately need it. In the meantime, he says he is humbled by the outpouring of support from people around the world who likely knew little to nothing about his nation prior to the disaster.

“That means so much to the Haitian community, the Haitian people,” he says. “We don’t take things for granted, we appreciate everything that somebody does for us.”

Among the many relief groups that have sprung up to send aid to Haiti, Dervil specifically points to a few that he has already made contributions to. Yéle Haiti is an organization created by Grammy-Award winning musician Wyclef Jean, a Haitian himself, that aims to revive the nation through various projects for education, health, environment and community development.

SOSHelpForHaiti.org is a website that accepts donations for a number of charities helping with relief efforts in Haiti.

And for those looking for a fashionable way to contribute, Ralph Lauren has designed a line of polo shirts with the Haitian flag printed on the chest. 100 percent of the proceeds will be donated to the United Way Worldwide Disaster Fund. Dervil says he’s already purchased three or four in various colors.

The biggest way he intends to help out, however, will be through a project he is working on right here in Morgantown at the end of February. While all the details have not yet been ironed out, Dervil is working with the university and its athletics teams to put together an event in town to get WVU athletes and their fans together for the common cause of supporting the people in Haiti.

For all the tragedy and devastation the island nation has had to endure this past month, and will certainly continue to endure in the future, Dervil knows that the people he spent the first 11 years of his life with will never yield to the trouble that surrounds them.

They will never lie down and quit in the face of adversity.

“The Haitian people are strong people. They’re the type of people that no matter how tough, how bad it might get, they’re still going to smile,” says Dervil. “When you see them, they’re going to show their spirit and they won’t be down looking sad. It might bother them, sure, but their faith is there and you can’t take their faith from them.”