This is a land of children; they can be seen and heard wherever you are. Curiosity and smiles are omnipresent, and in the smaller areas hordes of children will run after yu calling out "blancs, blancs.." They love to tell stories, ask questions, and are natural models in front of the camera.
We spent a little while in an orphanage in Anse a Galets run by by the Wesleyan church, and the children seemed genuinely happy and full of life, well cared for and very friendly. Unfortunately, there were a few who lost both parents in Port au Prince, and they had that lost look, that thousand mile stare.
The Haitians are very polite; it is important to greet someone properly before asking any other questions - "bon jour" before lunch. and 'bon soir' any time after noon. A friendly greeting is often all it takes to start a conversation. Most educated Haitians speak French, as that is the language of the schools. If you speak French, many doors are opened into the lives of these people. Having a few words of Creole opens those dorrs a little further...time to see if Rosetta Stne has Creole lessons!
The men are probably the physically strongest people any of us have seen. When you see a line of relatively small men unload a large truck, emtying it of 50 pound rice bags in a few minutes by tossing a bag to the next man every few seconds, it's pretty hard not to be impressed. Most of the men we saw in the operating room had physiques that North Americam men might spend thousands at the gym and with personal trainers to achieve, only to fail miserably!
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