‘Auntie Data’ celebrates 45 years as a market vendor

AN entrepreneur in every sense of the word, at age 69, Jasmattie, also called “Auntie Data” – a winsome and endearing vegetable and fruit vendor, is Stabroek Market’s oldest and longest-serving female vendor, providing a much-needed service to the people of Guyana.

Auntie Data, for almost 45 years, has been faithfully plying her trade in fruit and green vegetables, through thick and thin, in sickness and in health, through good times and bad. She’s been providing a virtual ‘Farm to Table’ service.

The industrious Auntie Data will be celebrating her 70th birth anniversary on April 14. She told the Pepperpot Magazine that the produce she sells comes from Wakenaam in large quantities and she would make big purchases from the wholesalers and store them in her stall on the Stabroek Market wharf. She recalls that back in the day she would sell in smaller quantities on her stand opposite a popular gas station, which no longer exists, in front of Stabroek Market, better known as ‘Big Market’.

The market vendors then, lived in camaraderie and the market was virtually a crime-free environment, much unlike today. This was to the extent that the agricultural vendors made the wharf a home over the weekend. Sales were assured and brisk on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays and so they would return home on Mondays with quite a ‘pretty penny’. In fact, it was the common view held, she said, that, “you coulda lock up your goods in the stalls and come back a week later and find them just the way you left them, but not today.”

Just last October, a relative’s stall was broken into on three occasions. Nothing has come out of it, and that is just one instance of the nuisance, vendors say.

“We used to sleep right out here in the stalls. They had decent toilet and bathroom facilities and kitchen. The vendors would cook in that area which is now a ‘cook shop mart’ (north of the Fire Station),” she said. But Data didn’t even have to cook her own meals since she had a sister-in-law, Betty Rafiq, living in central Georgetown who provided meals for her.

And whenever she had to be away from the home, her husband who used to work with the Transport and Harbours Department ((T&HD) would take care of the children – five boys and two girls- ensuring that they went to school.

A FIGHTER
But even though the distance from her home in Wakenaam posed a challenge, Auntie Data never harboured any thoughts of giving up. She was a fighter.

Because she was dealing in perishable produce, Auntie Data very quickly developed a strategy, and so she would concentrate on selling bananas first since they are prone to getting ripe quickly; leafy vegetables on the second day; limes on the third day, leaving pumpkins for later. And so she never ran into difficulty. But all in all, business was good and she would quickly sell out the bananas and other produce over the weekend. There were people coming from Linden, Canal, Bonasika, Parika and all over to make purchases. Linden people would come Sunday, Monday and Thursday and would shop big. People from Canal and Bonasika would come by boat and they would load up and go back.

In 1998, she moved to Crane, on the West Coast of Demerara, which made logistics easier for her. Comparing the earlier days to today she said: “Long ago you see pon a Sunday, yuh ain’t gat hands fuh sell.

“Oh the market ain’t going good now at all. The sales slow, money not circulating and plenty goods spoiling because you can’t get to push it off. We can’t carry them back so we have to dump everything that don’t sell,” Data said dolefully.
But vendors on the Stabroek wharf are perturbed, fearing that they will soon be displaced for maintenance works that will soon take place. Auntie Data also commented that the attitude of the market constables to vendors is not nice, stating that they need to be more cooperative and polite. However, she expressed kudos for the revenue staff out of the office of the Clerk of Market who are more polite and respectful.

But even with circumstances being what they are, Auntie Data is resolute about sticking it out to the end. “I wouldn’t give up, even at my age. We have to remember that is not every day that fisherman does catch fish. When we get a little, we should put up a little out of that little. Don’t go on a spending spree and next few days you don’t know what to do. Above all, keep your capital flowing and the business will keep growing,” was her admonition for young people and others in the entrepreneurial business.