Getting Around

Travelling in this country is like nothing we have ever experienced before. Slow and difficult does not even begin to explain it. Getting anywhere is a chore. There are numerous was of traveling about the city and countryside, all which are inconsistent and unreliable if you do not have your own means of transportation. You can hop on the back of a motor bike or an unmarked rundown van or car which are used as taxis. Public transit vehicles are called Tap-Taps, they are small Toyota pick-up trucks with benches built on to either side of the box that people rush to claim a spot in, cramming in and sitting on each other’s laps along busy streets. Some Tap-Taps are similarly appointed larger trucks which would otherwise be used for hauling. Tap-Taps do not run on any specific schedule, but follow a specific route (marked in paint on their doors) that would lead you to an area where you could access another after a bit of a walk. These vehicles are all rundown and creaky, threatening to fall apart as they navigate the numerous holes and cracks in the road, expelling black exhaust as they go. Getting around this way is highly time consuming. It took us six hours to get to a bank that was actually working, walking long distances down dirty streets in the blistering heat and hopping in various taxis and tap-taps.

To get across the country from one city to another you hop on one of these forms of transport making your way slowly across the city with long waits for the next vehicle to arrive, or walking long distances to the next route one travels. You make your way across the crowed rubble strewn city to the edges of places like Cite de Soleil where old school busses wait to transport you from one place to another. The busses wait there till they are full, with 3 people to a single bench seat. Cramped, hot and sweaty, you travel across the county with windows down so you can breathe, the bus zooming by slower vehicles constantly honking the horn to let other vehicles and pedestrians know they are barreling through. When it rains, you put up the window, unless of course the window is broken, in which case you sit and smile while rain whips you in the face. Entertainment is provided by onboard vendors, inevitably of personal grooming supplies and supplements, who banter ceaselessly in Creole, only sometimes gaining enough of passenger’s attentions to illicit a response. A day’s travel in country without a private vehicle is hard work.