From the moment you step out of the airport in Port-au-Prince (PAP), the streets are extremely crowded. People are selling their goods along the side of the road, or walking up and down the middle of the street, trying the sell their stuff to both drivers and passengers. Colorful buses called “tap-taps” are everywhere. Each bus is carefully decorated, –each with a different design, and all are completely packed with people going from one place to another. Motorcycles are all around, zipping in and out of traffic, (-sometimes with five people all riding on one of them). This city is alive!
After you get out of the PAP traffic, things get more exciting: -a little too exciting sometimes. For example, experiences involving a massive truck, high-speed passing, and a foot of clearance, is not uncommon. This generally happens on the big highways, where there are two paved lanes, with lines that are universally ignored. Picture three lanes on a standard two-lane road, but with the middle lane’s direction flow solely determined by whoever gets there first. It’s kind of like an extra-dangerous game of Chicken.
Off the big highways, you’re in for more pain, and sometimes more fear. Most roads in Haiti are dirt and riddled with rocks and potholes. Bob swears that there are worse roads than the one going up to Café Lompre, and I believe it. When I say the roads are painful, I mean that, literally, you will hurt when traveling on them. I remember Bob telling us that the highway was coming up. What he meant was a change from an all-dirt road to a broken stretch of mangled asphalt. Haiti is also mountainous, which means that guardrails should be everywhere, but they aren’t, and that passing on blind, treacherous, mountain curves should be illegal, but it isn’t.
So how does one avoid dying on those blind curves when one is on a motorcycle and a huge truck is coming down the mountain at breakneck speed? One uses one’s horn. Bertone once told Bob, with urgency, that the horn on the Land Cruiser needed to be fixed. It’s weak, duck-like cry was insufficient. A driver in Haiti uses his horn for everything, even to replace head lights when driving in the dark up a mountain. Who needs light when one can be heard, instead? A driver uses the horn for scenarios involving the movement of oxen, pedestrians, and other cars , vehicle passing on hairpin turns while going up a mountain, or to get gates to open up, to name just a few.
Obviously, driving in Haiti is not something to be taken lightly. There are a few people whose driving is astonishing. First, Bob drives like a Haitian, and his reputation is, quite frankly, infamous. In the words of a fellow team-member, “Bob “Barney” McCoy (1942- ?? ), is a part-time Haitian automobile racer, whose name is synonymous with speed. Known for his aggressive driving techniques, frequent road rage, and utterance of some little known Creole slang at his fellow Haitian drivers, McCoy spreads terror and fear on the streets of Leogane.” I think it’s a little exaggerated, especially since he’s a whole lot safer than Brother Olizard, who speeds so fast that you are likely to crack your head against the window when you go over the smallest of potholes. Actually, the Canadians thought it was the scariest thing in the world to drive up the mountain with Brother Olizard when they first arrived, and they weren’t too keen on getting back in the car with him. Bertone says that he, himself, is a slow driver, but that is sometimes more frightening. He doesn’t seem to have a sense of urgency as he leisurely passes, (as with oncoming traffic at high velocity).
In conclusion, driving is part of the Haitian experience, so if you go on a mission trip, be prepared to shave a few years off of your life, and come back with bumps, bruises, but a lot of good stories.