SO, one morning, while staying with a good friend and ‘sista’ in Alberttown, I took an early walk to Bourda Market to buy some packet milk.
As I strolled along the mall west towards Orange Walk, I greeted some vendors setting up their stalls; “good morning,” I called out. “Mornin mummy,” came the reply. As I turned towards North Road, I suddenly realised that many stalls were still closed, so I asked a fruit vendor where I could get the milk.
He said, “Doan go on North Road, nobody ain open. Ya gotta go to Robb Street.” I thanked him and proceeded along Orange Walk. Before I got to Robb Street, I saw a young man, whom I had met more than a decade earlier, unpacking some goods by his stand.
I asked if he remembered me and he said he did. There was a chair in front of the storeroom where he kept his goods and so I sat, chatting with him as I watched him approach and open the door of a car parked close by.
“Is that your car?” I asked, and he replied, “Yes,” moving to pay a ‘worker,’ who had just cleaned the area around his stand. Another man approached, and the young vendor said, in a student voice, “Ya betta move dem cardboard wuh ya left deh.” Without hesitation, the man retorted, “Of course I gun move it, cause you doan buy duh.”
I laughed as he picked up the bundle of cardboard, walked a few feet away, pausing to look past me. “Wuh ya lookin fuh?” he asked of someone I could not see. I gathered from his tone that he was poking fun at the other person, probably a crack smoker looking on the ground, as they are known to do. Not getting a reply, the man said, openly laughing now, “Hold on I gun come back an help ya look.”
Meanwhile, the young vendor had gone into his storeroom to get a soft drink that I requested. When he came out, I said to him, “Ya know what is the name of your car?” He looked at me with a puzzled expression, then broke into a broad smile when I told him, “The name is ‘Progress.”
For indeed that is what I saw, remembering that when I first met him, and he was just ‘starting out’, he did not even have a bicycle. As I continued my walk towards Robb Street, I noticed that everyone was cleaning up, not only the area around their stands but the entire roadway. On Robb Street, the same thing was happening, and the pungent smell of a popular disinfectant assailed my nostrils. I had noticed this kind of early morning cleaning up taking place at markets around the country -Stabroek, La Penitence, Rose Hall Town, Port Mourant and no doubt the many others I have never visited.
Is a market ting.
DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.
