Driving in Haiti

I’ve been driving in Haiti for approximately one month now. In the first week, my car was sideswiped during the day as it was parked on the street outside the school. On the way to the beach on Saturday I hit a taptap(a pickup that is used as public transportation),I hit it lightly and the taptap was fine but I managed to scrape the front end of my car a little. For this reason a lot of people in Haiti have a “defence” put on the front and sometimes even the back of their car. A defence is basically a mental contraption that you attach to your car to help protect it from others hitting you or you hitting others. It’s pretty effective, my roommate was hit by another car the other day and her car was absolutely fine, but the other car didn’t look quite as good. I don’t have one on my car yet but hope to get one soon. I was taking to another expat and she said that she hit a taptap and the metal box on the back of the taptap became entwined with her front end and they couldn’t pull apart, they had to use a saw and cut the cars apart. That’s crazy!
In general things are going well. The roads are pretty horrendous in some places and you have to drive super slow. Right now my shocks are pretty good but we’ll see how long they last. The traffic is pretty bad at peak hours and it takes extra long to get places, it makes me homesick for Toronto:) One of the roads that I take each day to school is closed for repairs (I never see anyone working on it however) and therefore I have to drive around, it takes almost double the time, so I’m getting up before the sun rises (it’s good for me I know) in order to arrive on time. That being said, I’m super thankful for a car that works and gets me around safely. I love the freedom it provides as well as the A/C that works very well!