Tap-tapping

Today I rode my very first tap-tap! A group of the volunteers wanted to go to Petionville to visit the street vendors and go to a store and do a few other random things, so I decided to join them. We waited at the tap-tap stop (there’s nothing particularly marking it as a tap-tap stop, you just kind of have to know where it is) until a tap-tap came that had enough room for all 7 of us. We climbed into the mostly enclosed back of a truck and bounced our way down the mountain. We made a few stops along the way, picking up new passengers and letting others off and a short while later we were in Petionville! Incidentally, it is always a bit interesting, or at least a little enlightening, to listen to the Haitians’ conversation when they are around a group of blan they think can’t understand Creole. After a few hours in Petionville we made our way to where the tap-taps were waiting to fill up and climbed aboard. Then we waited for more passengers and while we waited we were offered every manner of goods, from bottled pop and water to cookies and crackers to phone cards. As we did not especially want or need any of these things we tried to avoid them as best we could and wait until we took off again. Pretty soon we were headed back up the mountain and made it to our stop. The tap-taps get their name from the way people tap the back of the cab to let the driver know they need off. I had previously known that. What I didn’t know was what you did if you were all the way in the back and couldn’t reach–you simply say mesi, and someone sitting nearest the driver kindly taps on the glass for you!

By the way, the ride was a bit bumpy and a bit crowded (although not as crowded as it would have been with only Haitians because several people were ready to get on, then saw the tap-tap full of blan and decided to wait for the next one). Overall, though, I enjoyed the experience and it’s certainly a reasonable means of transportation as our trip to Petionville and back (about a 20 minute drive each way) cost less than $1.50 a person.

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