Tap-taps: A symbol of Haiti’s endurance | Essay

Editor’s Note: This article, originally published on May. 19, 2023, is being republished from The Haitian Times archives to share some of the best holiday reads, tips, tricks, and recipes.

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I have enjoyed the haphazard community created in the back of a tap-tap. Despite bumps of a mountainous road, babies fell asleep in my arms while I held them for a watchful mother. Teens, who wanted to practice English, chatted with me. And toddlers looked at me with fearful eyes, not wanting to sit next to my white skin. But by the time the ride ended, they were convinced I wouldn’t eat them while playing “peek-a-boo.” 

I’m an international policy reporter for The Haitian Times, living in the U.S. I’m well aware of changes in Haiti during the last few years — I watch U.N. Security Council meetings, sift through economic projections and write articles detailing U.S. sanctions on Haitian leaders. 

I know life in Haiti is difficult. Like many, I wonder how long this situation can last and how Haiti will survive.

Perhaps the countryside where I first traveled by tap-tap is less impacted. I know it isn’t. I receive WhatsApp messages from Haitian friends about their concerns for their beloved country, revealed in notes like “Lacroix is not the same as when you were last here.” 

They write that fewer tap-taps make the 75-minute run between Jacmel and the village of Lacroix. The high cost of gasoline, which translates to the number of gourdes paid for a seat, has limited the number of villagers who can travel to Jacmel and back. Tuesday, market day, is the exception in reverse — vendors from the city load their wares into trucks, travel the hour and a half and hope for a good day of selling. 

Tap-taps are an adjustment for Blan

My last tap-tap ride took place in 2018, but my memory of the best goes back to summer of 2012, the year I visited a series of sanitary, educational and agricultural projects, which gwoupman peyisan, local associations, initiated — invested in part by the now-closed community-based nonprofit in which I was involved.

Sainfort Voltaire accompanied me during those three weeks. He served as translator to a medical mission that introduced my partner and me to Haiti. It was he who suggested we could create a community-based nonprofit to invest in Haitian projects, leaving their creation and oversight to local people. 

That day in 2012, I waited for Voltaire in the shade of a low-slung building while he went to find his friend, Joseph Guidor. A safe and consistent driver, Guidor’s mechanical care ensured his vehicle — despite its rust — would make it across the river and up the steep and rocky mountain road.       

Guidor offered us the preferred front seats, but I liked the fresh air of the truck’s back bed. Riders already waited there with an assortment of bags, boxes and buckets all holding bon bagay. No live chickens traveled with us this time. 

I hefted myself over the side panel onto the wooden one-by-six plank, bolted to the Toyota’s back edge. Occupants jostled objects to make room for me; and, in exchange, gave me to hold a black plastic bag filled with sugar.

We sat in the midday sun. It seemed to be getting hotter. A woman in her 30’s, with her husband’s help, climbed into the back to my left. Her market purchases came with her. She, too, gave me something to hold — a white plastic bag filled with bread. 

Why couldn’t we wait in the shade, I asked myself. I thought about the options available in Jacmel and decided there really weren’t any. The few trees, which were not cut for firewood, grew behind private walls. 

Voltaire leaned out of the front cab and asked whether I was doing all right. “Wi,” I said, my forehead glistening.

The passengers explained to one another that a middle-aged woman who placed her groceries in our tap-tap went to do more shopping, and Guidor couldn’t leave without her. Meanwhile, a young man, who I knew from the village, gave me a kiss hello. He helped Guidor rearrange boxes in the back, added a few of his own and climbed in. 

The sweat beaded above my eyebrows and curved downward to the top of my cheeks. A short, gray-haired woman approached the truck with a tall young man, her grandson I guessed. He hoisted her over the side and plunked her unceremoniously onto the plywood edge. Then he wriggled into his own seat.

While we waited, I envisioned us melting into pools of dark and white chocolate. No one else seemed concerned by the heat. I leaned around the cab’s corner and remarked to Voltaire with some edge to my voice that it was hot. 

He grinned, probably remembering I was the one who hadn’t wanted to sit in the shade of the cab. He slapped the back of the right hand against the palm of the left, then the back of the left against the palm of the right, reminding me, “If you can’t change it, don’t worry about it.”

The woman who went shopping returned. She passed us an aluminum bowl, two feet across. It was added to the mountain of supplies. Two hands reached out — from either side of the truck — to place the bowl at the true center. Then, the shopper found her spot to sit. With Voltaire and Guidor, there were 17 in all.

A pop-up Haitian community begins

The number of people who can ride in a tap-tap has amazed me: 25 passengers is the highest number I’ve seen. Children balanced atop goods in the center, four sat in the cab and a couple of men stood on the back bumper.

This time, Guidor, satisfied he could make a profit, backed the tap-tap out and maneuvered down the streets of Jacmel to cross the river. 

These days, as I sit in my Milwaukee home, I’m well aware of my privileged existence and tendency to romanticize the Haitian villager’s life. I imagine the blue skies and white clouds over Sud Est will never turn into hurricane conditions. Yet I know hurricanes hit Haiti hard. New difficulties daily hamper Haitians’ lives — fuel blockades, food shortages, a non-working government and so forth. 

That 2012 day was not one of disasters but of patience and cooperation.

We crossed the river and climbed the switchbacks showing us a more dramatic vista of Jacmel the higher we drove up the mountain.

In the front, Guidor drove cautiously. In the back, we re-enacted Mr. Toad’s wild ride. As centrifugal force pushed us outward toward the sides, the 15 of us reached out to cling to the edge of the aluminum bowl. The packages slid each time we turned, putting pressure on our legs, but the swarm of us, however much we gyrated from side to side, remained centered — magically.

We reached level ground in Terre Rouge, but we were not yet to our destination.

I watched hands leave the bowl and heard a sound, which hadn’t been there before. The truck rolled to a stop in the red dirt. Guidor and Voltaire hopped out and walked around to the rear right tire. Flat.

The unflappable Guidor wasted no time getting tools from behind the driver’s seat. I gathered bags of bread and sugar entrusted to me and prepared to empty the truck bed. Stay put, my tap-tap mates motioned.

Guidor set the oft-used jack under the rear axle and raised the truck with its occupants still seated. One leaned over the side to give suggestions to Guidor, already working hard to get us back on the road.       

We sat in the shade, cooled by the leafy trees overhead. The lady with the gray hair commented on the prices at the market. Her son joked with my friend from the village. I asked the ages of the couple’s children, and they listed them out for me. Soon, all of the people in the back were conversing.

Despite the challenges, the truck arrived in Lacroix and, with it, an experience I hold to this day.

This morning, I heard from my friends in Lacroix. They are experiencing food shortages like others across Haiti. Yes, they have vegetables from their farms, but they lack money for those imported items — spaghetti and cooking oil, bread, which they buy from market vendors. 

My memory won’t let go of the Haitian community I glimpsed in the back of Guidor’s tap-tap and its characteristics of generosity, patience, determination and inclusion. 

I think of today’s hardships and know the qualities I saw on a hot summer day are still there. That day on the tap-tap represents the basis on which Haiti has long endured and will continue, in its unique fashion, to overcome yet new challenges. 

The post Tap-taps: A symbol of Haiti’s endurance | Essay appeared first on The Haitian Times.

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Tap-taps: A symbol of Haiti’s endurance | Essay was first posted on December 24, 2024 at 11:01 am.