On Friday I returned from a week in Haiti.  Until the rains of Sandy arrived and wreaked havoc with the local population, every morning I went on the roof of my lodging and took in Port-au-Prince with all my senses.  One morning, as the sun rose, this is what I heard:

Rooster, birds chirping, 360 degrees of sound. . . sweeping cement with straw broom, clucking of chickens behind. . . distant horn. . . pick-up truck rattling down bumpy road, neighbors calling out. . . pounding on metal, young girl singing at the top of her lungs, hum of people living life in the early morning, tiny goat bleating. . . rattling on a tall metal gate to signal “let me in!”, whir of distant generator, truck crushing stones into dirt as it drives along. . . a mother enthusiastically reprimanding her child several houses away, rooster to the left answering a rooster across the way, the breeze scruffling the pages of my notebook between pennings, a sneeze across the street, overloaded mopeds wheezing around potholes, foot and motor traffic increases in frequency and volume. . . the sun has risen.  It is the end of the beginning of the day.

Sound familiar?  This could have been any number of places I have lived and visited around the world.  Have you been somewhere in the early morning where these sounds were common place?

And here are some photos taken in the afternoon of the view from the roof.