To market! To market! It's one of the favourite pastimes among Caribbean people, especially around Christmas time. Arima market, too, has its attractions. Sporting a white head wrap, a woman pleaded with a passersby to accept the Lord Jesus Christ into their debauched lives.
Momentarily, customers at the Arima market on Pro Queen Street, focused on her rantings in the vicinity of the bank.
Inside the carpark, the late Siparia parang legend Daisy Voisin's croonings competed with the wayside preaching. Apart from servings of gospel and parang, visions of Sunday lunch dangled in shoppers' heads. They were more focused on purchasing a variety of produce from vendors under tents of tarpaulin. It offered makeshift protection from the blue sky, which had blessed the morning with its fire.
Crabs bound with a bit of tough green tweed, were laid in the scales. It evoked images of the colloquial expression "tied up like a market crab." In never ending line, stalls were stacked high with ground provisions–including yam, cassava, eddoes, plantains, candied yams (sweet potatoes) and green bananas. Pyramids of pommecytheres were broken by emerald-green limes.
Above the din, vendors yelled "$2 for a chive, $5 for rolled up callaloo bush, and $3 for a head of lettuce." Slicing a huge pumpkin into quarters, a vendor exposed its thick, yellow flesh, tinged with orange. Green, the colour of Islam, was another popular colour. Water cress, cucumbers, patchoi and okras were part of the green scene.
Arima market magic
Poets like Jamaica's Agnes Maxwell-Hall have celebrated a day at the market. Sights, sounds and smells assail the senses. There's a euphony in the description of "honey, pepper, leaf green limes/pagan fruit whose names are rhymes." At Arima, it was not different. A special magic pervaded the lively arena of buying and selling. Dotting the warren, were "oranges and saffron yams/baskets, ruby guava jams."
Slipping into stentorian mode, a vendor bellowed: "Doux doux! (Patois for darling). Come and get your pimento. At 4 for $10. you can't go wrong."
The slogans were simple, yet effective. Wrung from the fertile soil, were heaps of dasheen, still partially covered in mud. At the fruit vendors, pawpaws hung like voluptuous nuggets of gold.
Common market vendor
Romantic poet William Wordsworth celebrated the beauty of nature and the common man in his poetry. Among his gems were To a Butterfly, I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, (spotting daffodils), and The Rainbow. A slew of contemporary Caribbean poets, too, have celebrated the common man–the market vendor.
Among them were Jamaica's Evan Jones–Song of the Banana Man, and Daisy Myrie's Market Woman. Local writer Vilma Dube went a step further and captured the sweetness of sucking sugar cane–a pillar of plantation society–in Croptime.
Market vendors also possess a common love that unite and bind them to the land. Due to these stellar qualities, poets find it impossible to forget the polyglot colour and variety of their faces. Visitors would no doubt reflect upon the happy fusion of T&T's myriad races as they preside over strange fruit like poix doix.
To the sociologist there is that badge of alertness which characterise market vendors. It's delicately balanced with the laughter and chatter of the women, who display unconscious strength and poise. There is depth in the simple tete-a-tetes."
Despite the issues at the Arima market, like vending beneath tarpaulins and lack of an adequate supply of water, the redeeming quality was the energy and vitality of the market vendors at Arima. Calypsonian David Rudder might have aptly described them as "Trini To the Bone."
