Vendors contented at Three Miles THE SIGHTS and sounds were those of a market but the smell of fuel from the nearby Texaco Service Station and the constant buzzing of motor vehicle engines reminded onlookers that Three Miles, Kingston was a busy point of transit for vehicles leaving and entering the Corporate Area. But vendors, fleeing from gunfire which erupted in sections of West Kingston on Saturday, made themselves at home. Fruits, vegetables and ground provisions, which were usually on display in the major markets and vending areas downtown, lay sprawled on tarpaulin-lined sidewalks on both sides of the road, in pickup trucks or on handcarts. "$50 fi ah heap ah Julie (mangoes). Three in a heap," vendors called out while customers wandered from stall to stall, asking the age-old question, "How much a pound?" As the evening wore on, the air was filled with smells of rice and peas and chicken. Jennifer Chambers was among them. "I sell down by the Wharf and when I went down there, people had gone home and so I had to come up here. (Business) not too bad. It kinda slow but I still fighting it," she said, adding that downtown "is a place mi nah touch fi di rest ah di week." Other vendors, some with cellular phones pinned to their clothes, agreed, somewhat bitterly at what the tension downtown cost them. "War just ah mash up wi life," one woman moaned. George Williams lamented that his goods, valued at over $5,000, had probably spoiled and Shereine Vernon had to leave barrels containing slippers and jeans and sales which usually average $8,000 on a Saturday. "After the nervous shock and everything, I came out (Monday). I feel so angry, so disgusted 'cause this is my job. No one come in to give you a dollar. They rather come in and take it (so) I like to depend on my self," Miss Vernon, a mother of two, said. Vendors also refused to go into the nearby D.C. Tavares market, a place they had been urged to go to, at first, by policemen from the Hunts Bay Police station and Town Clerk, Errol Green, who were concerned that presence of the vendors at the busy Three Miles round-a-bout would cause a traffic jam. In the end, the vendors were allowed to stay, courtesy of reports that some of those who had gone to the D.C. Tavares market had been fleeced by persons from the surrounding area. "We had to rethink our decision because if we had to provide security down there, it would deplete our resources by 50 per cent," explained Deputy Superintendent Trevor Morrison from the Hunts Bay Police Station. "So again with the agreement of the Town Clerk's office we decided that since the problem could not be solved, we would manage the situation. Therefore what we did was to try as much as is practicable to give them one lane and traffic would use the other lane." The large sidewalk in front of the police station helped to keep the vendors, who have conducted themselves well, off the streets, DSP Morrison said. He added that plans had been put in place to accommodate the vendors until today when he hoped the situation would go back to normal. The Gleaner was told that Metropolitan Parks and Markets (MPM) was collecting garbage in the area and vendors are being allowed to use the police station's bathroom and that of a nearby plaza. However, DSP Morrison was sure that when things went back to normal the vendors would return to the downtown area because "they are embarrassed as it relates to the sanitary conditions." He told The Gleaner that if yesterday's return to normality continued then vendors could be moved back to Coronation Market as early as today. But that was not what some vendors want. Many told The Gleaner that they liked where they were as sales had been far better at Three Miles than downtown, where many customers, they said, were often afraid to go. "Mi feel like say if de market open back mi still ah go sell out yah so," declared a young woman. "Everything sell fast out here. All when one bag ah Irish, one bag ah onion wi teck one week fi sell off, we can sell three bag ah Irish fi di day." Vendors also said that they hoped that the Government would build a market elsewhere and that, if they were allowed to remain at Three Miles, they would pay money to clean the area.
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