Tap, Tap

Public transportation in abroad is very interesting. The pictures on old vehicle are showing the culture and custom in that place. At the same time, the name of public transportation is also interesting for foreigners. For example, a bus was called “angkot” in particular region in Indonesia, “Matatu” in Uganda, “Flying Corch” in Pakistan, and “Tap Tap” in here, Haiti.

People in Haiti deeply believe god, and they like music very much, so on the body of vehicle, the picture of Christ, or favorite soccer player like Kaka and Maradona, or famous singer like Bob Marly, Shakira, Tupac, and Snoop dogg. 

The other aspect of Tap Tap is that no payment is necessary most of the time unless passenger has large size of luggage if passenger rides on the roof of bus or hangs on the pole of bus.  It is very risky but people do not care about that risk.



It can often be seen the view that passenger eat something or have that bag by one hand even though they hold the bus which is running by 80~90 km per hour by the other hands. One of the passenger sit down the edge of the roof and take the nap. A vendor of the bus sale is holding the bus and sales the goods to passenger of Tap Tap. Such a vendor can ride the bus for one section of bus line.



National route 2 which continue from port-au-prince, capital of Haiti, to Miragoane, Jakmel, and Leogane is always crowed by Tap Tap. The driver of Tap Tap never cares about traffic rule, and music is played loudly in bus. The road is destroyed by earthquake, and that additional damage is given by rain and flood. This makes many traffic accidents and its victim in every month.

JEN perform the activity in Leogane and some of staffs live in Port-au-prince, so they need to use Tap Tap to come to office in Leogane. The fee of Tap Tap is cheap but it takes long time to reach Leogane. Staff in Port-au- Prince get their house out at 4:00 am and arrive office at 8:00am. We hope that people are safe including JEN’s staff, and the road and traffic system are fixed by government.