A few days before she boarded a plane and returned to Covenant for her final semester, senior Alex Amicy visited the National Palace of Haiti in Port-au-Prince with her family. They admired the building, taking pictures as they walked around the surrounding parks. Less then a week later, the palace would lie in heap of rubble, alongside innumerable structures and shanties in the earthquake-devastated capital.

“I would have never thought it would be my last time looking at it,” said Amicy, who was born and raised in Port-au-Prince. “I can’t believe that I was there last Saturday.” When the news of last Thursday’s catastrophe first broke, Amicy immediately tried to get in touch with her family, who resides in a compound about thirty minutes outside the capital. Somehow, she was able to get a hold of them, and soon learned that though they were hit hard, her family had survived.

“My eleven year old brother was in Port-au-Prince, and he saw a lot of bodies,” said Amicy. “I still haven’t talked to him, but I know he’s OK.” As of last week, Amicy still had yet to hear from many of her friends who were living near the capital. “There’s hardly any communication down there,” she said.

The Haitian earthquake on January 12th was one of the deadliest on record. Though cataclysmic damage was relatively limited to the capital, personal connections between rural Haiti and the nation’s only major city run deep. “We don’t have the same connectedness here to rural and city life that they do in Haiti,” said Steve Corbett, Professor of Community Development. “There’s nothing in comparison. Most people in Haiti know someone in Port-au-Prince.”