Chinese characters and camera – my magic tools

The local staffs are so curious about the fact that I am from Hong Kong, China. First, they are so surprised that I speak French. With all the international relief workers of MSF here, very seldom do they see Chinese people. Secondly, I believe with the importance of China nowadays, they are very interested of anything "Chinese"...when they see the Chinese characters on my t-shirt, they got so excited. Then some of them started to bring in caps or t-shirts that have Chinese characters on it and ask me what they meant...they started to write down sentences in French on small pieces of paper and ask me to write those in Chinese... It was not easy for me to explain to them that in the Chinese language, there is no alphabets like that in English or French, and that the language is character-based...and when I explained to them how Chinese characters are formed, how many different tones we can pronounce the character in, what kind of meaning it carries by each character, and the importance of the strokes in writing the characters, etc, etc...they all looked so amazed and stunned...I’m so glad that they have this interest to get to know Chinese (people, language and the culture) more, it is a good way for me to be closer to them, as a person to another person, as a human being to another human being, and not only as an administrator and her staff. What a good ice-breaker! Also, I find the camera is a good tool to help me "solve problems" with staff too! Remember that I mentioned that there are quite a number of "gangsters" who come and ask for jobs everyday?  After a week or so, I didn't manage to convince them that there is no job to offer at the moment and that there is no use for them to come everyday. The reason why they wanted to come everyday is that they think I won't remember them, and so I will not give them a job even when there is one. So, I started to take down their names and I will call them by their names just to show that I remember them. But that was still not enough...so I thought about another "trick": I took out my digital camera and I asked them to take a picture with me. I said, "Now I will remember you, XXX. Although that does not mean I can have a job to give you, at least I will remember you as someone I met in Haiti!!!" They were all so excited and happy and that's why now, I have many many many photos of me and them in my camera!!!!