Downtown Port au Prince

I stare blankly through the truck window unable to fully comprehend what I see. It’s mid afternoon and we are driving through downtown Port au Prince, or what’s left of it. Before the earthquake we rarely visited downtown because it was always so extremely busy. Now six months later, there’s hardly a person in sight.

I remember flying over the downtown core before the quake and seeing the masses of people teeming the streets. Now it’s quiet. Eerily still. All that is left of the once colourful streets is pile after pile of gray rubble. The only hint of colour is the plastic garbage poking out from between the cement blocks.

Every now and then we see a pile of blackened tire treads, the only remainder now of the people who died and whose bodies were burned.

The magnitude of the destruction is too great to describe or fully comprehend. Each of the hundred of thousands of people that died here had a story, a life, a family, and now all that is left is a pile of ashes, surrounded by tire treads. Seeing it all I feel a numbness creep over me. Oh Haiti, words can’t describe the extent of the destruction and the pain suffered here.