My taxi driver, Auguste, was Haitian. He didn’t tell me that explicitly, but I could recognize his Creole as he spoke on his mobile phone.

After his short phone call, I asked him if his family was okay. He replied, not completely relieved, that his parents, wife, and children have been living in the USA for the past year or so.

Perhaps foolishly, I remarked,

“It’s good that you’re all here, safe.”

Auguste sighed.

“Yes, it’s good that my blood relatives are here, but the people in Haiti, still there, they are my family too. I may be safe here, but my heart is still with my Haitian family, under the rubble.”

(UN Photo/Logan Abass/The United Nations)