Saturday January 23, 9 a.m. — Our driver’s name is Biondi, a large Haitian man with kids and a wife. He knows enough English to get us back and forth. He takes us in his Toyota mini van, zooming around packs of slow moving people. a man on a mission to get us to our morning “liveshot” location in time.
We’ve labeled his transport “the hell van,” because riding with Biondi is a breakneck run of sputtering starts and hard, unpredictable stops.
On this morning, our security guy riding in the lead car pulls over. Jimmie walks back to Biondi and tells the father of two, in very clear terms, that he must follow as closely as possible.
“Do not let other cars come between our two car caravan.”
Its a security thing. Jimmie walks back to the lead SUV. Biondi doesn’t take kindly to the lecture, but does speed up.
Driving this early in the morning, we see so many people sleeping in the streets. Slowly, bodies begin rising from the pavement, from sidewalks still covered with debris.
I don’t like that word. Never have. I’ve Always thought it was disrespectful to those who’d lost almost everything.
Debris- two syllables that most of the time masks what it is that’s laying in the streets. Family photos, children’s toys, bricks that were part of a wall that held up a family’s home. Wooden legs of a table where they ate — where people shared meager meals. That word “debris” is just too clean. Its a word the media uses too quickly, and then we move on to the next sentence. Maybe we should take a few more seconds to explain better what we are seeing scattered along the streets.
It not debris. Those are pieces of people’s lives that our driver, Biondi, is trying to not run over as we eventually make it to our location in time to get on television.