Maggy, Mag, Maga are some of the nicknames that the passengers of MINUSTAH’s shuttle bus give to their driver, Magalie Alfred. This single 43 year-old is one of seven women on the team of 70 drivers who transport personnel of the peacekeeping Mission.

It is 5:00 in the afternoon and the shuttle buses are ready to take staff of MINUSTAH back home to their various destinations from Headquarters in Tabarre, in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince. Before leaving, Magalie passes around a book into which the passengers write their names.

Once on their way, some passengers talk about their day, others quietly listen to music on their players. Unruffled, despite the chaotic traffic of Port-au-Prince, Magalie drops off each passenger in front of their house to “Thank you, Madame.”

“We don’t often see female bus drivers. I find Magalie is a very careful and exemplary driver,” says Convinton Bien-Aimé, one of the regulars. For Sandy Cadet, Magalie “is a credit to Haitian women.”

Magalie is punctual and is always at her bus by 2:00 p.m. even though her trip starts at 5:00 and ends at 10:00. She takes her job seriously saying that she dreamed of becoming a driver since she was a child. However, Magalie started her working life as a seamstress, a more traditionally “female” profession. It was not until 1999 that she was able to realise her dream. “I started with the Centre National des Equipement (Haitian body dealing with maintenance of infrastructure) which at the time was trying to recruit women as drivers of heavy equipment,” she said.

The native of Jérémie, in the south east of Haiti, joined the Transportation Section of MINUSTAH in 2005 as a truck driver all over Haiti. Two years later she found a quieter job driving shuttle buses for MINUSTAH. “I have never had an accident,” she says proudly adding that breaking down and flat tyres, something all drivers face, don’t scare her. “Magalile is a woman who is already to take on any task as good as any man,” says her colleague Jean Renel Edouard, one of the longest serving drivers in MINUSTAH, adding, “Nothing rattles her!”

Despite all the time spent on the job, Magalie always tries to find time for her family. While she is dropping off her colleagues at their homes, her phone rings. Her 23 year-old daughter, who is studying in the Dominical Republic, calls to inform her of the date she is returning home. “I’m driving, my love. I’ll call you when I return to the garage,” she responds, always vigilant. “Above all, I respect my job and I apply this discipline even at home. I also try to be a good mother to my daughter,” she says adding that at home she does the laundry, cooks and raises her daughter like any other working mother. Even if she finishes her daily routine at 10:00 p.m. she remembers the days of driving heavy equipment when she would work late into the nigh, returning home to her daughter long after nightfall.