After having seen the city for myself, I still haven’t seen a photo that has captured the magnitude of the devastation in Port-au-Prince, including my own.  When looking at a pile of rubble in a photo there is definitely a disconnect.  But when you’re standing in front of soccer ball sized chunks of concrete that form a 20 foot high mound and you learn that used to be a 3 story school, there really is not a good way to capture that.  And then you turn onto another street and see more piles that make up hospitals, day care centers, grocery stores, homes, and churches.  You round another corner and see hillsides that look like concrete landslides.  Hundreds of thousands of buildings – pancaked or pulverized.  One of the cooks at GLA (the orphanage) lost her 10 year old son.  He was at school.  Like most of the buildings, they still haven’t recovered the bodies.  If they do, they may find a backpack that will confirm he was in the building.  Now imagine that situation multiplied exponentially in every suburb, neighborhood, and street corner in a city that once housed 3 million people.  There are indeed limits to photography.

Erin, a precious new friend who is doing incredible things for the weakest and most vulnerable Haitians. More on her in my next post.

A school once stood in this lot behind the Cathedral (which is completely open and exposed to the back window)

Notice the shovel’s handle.  Hand carved.  They’re not waiting for heavy equipment.

The next post will be from the neighborhood we found at the end of this river bed. The roads we inaccessible, so we did some four wheeling. Haitian drivers are awesome. A group of Muslim Red Cross workers were more than shocked when they saw us drive up next to them. They had left their brand new Land Rovers at the top of the hill and hiked down and then a good distance through the river.  Rant Warning: **This group was the only Red Cross personnel I saw in Haiti.  It’s about time they became accountable.** End Rant.  Give where it makes a difference… send tents!  Sheets and curtains covered by tarps are not cutting it.