Madeleine Philbin is regional director for CRS-Midwest. She is based in Chicago. You can read previously published sections of this series here.

We had driven upward to get to visiting these folks, and from this vantage point, that’s when I first saw the beautiful blue waters of the Port-au-Prince Bay.

One of the realities in this very much damaged neighborhood (Christ Roi) is removing the rubble. It’s not so much that people can’t figure ways of building temporary shelters for themselves—but where? The ground is covered either with a) damaged homes or b) rubble. People have been moving rubble from their home area and piling it in the road by hand or by wheelbarrow. There are some functioning city services which have removed about 25 trucks of rubble in this neighborhood, we were told. But there is beaucoup, beaucoup, beaucoup remaining.
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Madeleine Philbin is regional director for CRS-Midwest. She is based in Chicago. You can read previously published sections of this series here.

I was starting to tell you about Hospice St Joseph. That was Monday, a beautiful day, but they are all beautiful days – still, the sky was exceptionally blue, and clouds exceptionally white and crisp in contrast. We began on Rue Martin Luther King, a paved main road, but turned off and up winding, hilly streets onto more of a rocky rubble-filled road. Here all was rubble, much rubble. Here was the fallen power line I’ve been warned against. (I came across another today just near our office—they’re still falling.)
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Madeleine Philbin is regional director for CRS-Midwest. She is based in Chicago. You can read previously published sections of this series here.

Hospice St Joseph was one of the places I visited with Farid (and Scott). We have also been to meet with Sr. Mary Finnick at Matthew 25 Guest House, to meet with Sr. Maryse Georges at the Conference Haiteinne des Religieux.
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Madeleine Philbin is regional director for CRS-Midwest. She is based in Chicago. You can read previously published sections of this series here.

I first saw Sacre Coeur–first stepped “off campus”–not with Farid, but with Mary, a young colleague here. I went to church with her on Sunday morning. We drove in her car. We left about 8 a.m. and there was no traffic really. (Credit Sunday, credit the World Cup.) I saw more of the world—more of the mountains (hills) encircling us.
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Madeleine Philbin is regional director for CRS-Midwest. She is based in Chicago. You can read previously published sections of this series here.

Farid points out another crossroads, this is where I counted the 20 bodies he says. He had already told me about taking a walk the day after the earthquake, and finding all the bodies that people apparently started piling up at the intersection for someone to pick up. When he told me that story, we were on the main drag that borders CRS offices.
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Madeleine Philbin is regional director for CRS-Midwest. She is based in Chicago.

“I mean! It’s incredible …” says Farid, with emotion, as we drive through the particularly destroyed neighborhood around Sacre Coeur church, almost a ghost town. I also know it’s the neighborhood where Farid grew up. He continues, “…Italy eliminated from the World Cup—in the first round!”
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