Sam Donnellon: For Sixers' Dalembert, head in the game, heart in Haiti

HE BEGAN punching numbers on his phone when the first awful report reached his ears. Earthquake. Haiti. Tens of thousands feared dead.

Samuel Dalembert tried to call. He tried to charter a plane. No signal, no tower, no airport. He paced his home, he watched the news.

"You're going out of your mind," he said last night before the Sixers' 93-92 loss to the Knicks. "You feel like you're in a cage. You cannot move. You cannot do anything."

Before communications went dead in Haiti, his father, a government worker, sent an e-mail saying he was safe with two of Dalembert's siblings. His mother and one sister live in Canada. Another sister is with his grandmother in Florida.

But there are so many others he doesn't know about. Old neighbors. Longtime friends. Family.

On the television, he saw a street near where he spent the first 14 years of his life, a street on which he once walked barefoot, a place where, he said, "We were there for each other." The street isn't there anymore. He doesn't know about the people. The 7.0-magnitude earthquake that hit Haiti on Tuesday had folded the street upon itself, rolling houses onto each other, turning a rolling hill into a roiling mess.

"I'm trying to be tough," he said. "But anybody who knows me, knows that deep inside I'm hurting."

Anybody who knows him, even from afar, knows there is nothing inside about it. Dalembert wears his moods, says what's on his mind even when he shouldn't. He was a frayed nerve before last night's game, his pain easy to see and easier to hear. He thought about not playing he said, but decided that would only add to the caged feeling, the sense of helplessness.

So he played. Started in fact, played every second of the first quarter, scored 10 points and had seven rebounds, blocked a shot. By the end of the third quarter, his rebound total was 19. By the end of the game, it was 21. He made six of eight shots, soft jumpers, tipped balls in, turned the ball over just twice.

He seemed to draw energy from the frustration of the last few days. Looking exhausted beforehand as he dressed, he seemed energized in the cocoon of a mid-January game.

"For 2 hours, I went out and played and didn't think of anything else," he said.

How? For those of us who often have equated his easy-going nature with a lack of mental toughness, well, it was a little surprising, and a little perplexing. All those people, all that uncertainty.

How?

"It's hard knowing there's a lot of people I know over there that I still have no news about," he said. "And also it's hard to see all the people from your country . . . Kids without their parents. They didn't do nothing wrong. They didn't do nothing wrong."

Haiti, part of a two-nation island, is one of the poorest countries in the world. According to UNICEF, it ranks 148 of 179 on its human development index. Government instability, food crises and natural disasters have defined much of its history, and were also the impetus for Dalembert's emigration to Montreal with some - but not all of his family - in 1994.

His grandmother, he said, used to feed the poorer members of the neighborhood, used to let them sleep on the floor of her house.

"We'd lay a sheet on the floor and we'd all be cracking up, six of us," Dalembert said. "Talking about life. We made the best of it. We thought that was life. We were grateful that we weren't sick and we were able to eat one meal and we had friends.

"That's why a lot of time you see how happy I am," he said. "It's just tough not to be happy every day."

UNICEF estimates that 46 percent of Haiti's population is under the age of 18. Almost half live in homes with mud floors, five to a room. Tropical Storm Noel did a number on them in 2007, four hurricanes piled on in 2008. There was a food shortage. Only one in 50 holds what we would call a steady job. And then this.

"It seems like it's been a terrible decade for us," Dalembert said.

He went there last August. The Samuel Dalembert Foundation has raised money and awareness, had initiated plans for a school. As of yesterday there's a hotline for donations to help the earthquake victims (877-243-4248). There is one hospital for every 100,000 people, or was before this.

Now?

Now the only real hope is that the village that raised Samuel Dalembert has more like him.

Lots more.

"That's why they always say you can be in the worst place as long as you have good people around you," he said. "As much as things were tough, we got used to it. There are certain things you get used to, you think it's the way people live. Until you come to America, and the chicken is clean over here. And you go to the market and it's, 'Oh, gosh, you can just buy stuff like this?' "

Send e-mail to donnels@phillynews.com.

For recent columns, go to http://go.philly.com/donnellon.