Hartley Neita, ContributorONE OF the things my sister and brother looked forward to when our father returned from his monthly trips to Kingston was a bag of half a dozen rust-red juice-full American apples.
After supper for the following six days, he pegged an apple for our mother, himself and us children. I loved to hear the crunch of the apple in my inner ear. The juice, too, also had a special tang, which I enjoyed. And I longed for the day when I could buy a whole apple and enjoy it all by myself.
When I came to Kingston to work in the late 1940s, I discovered that these apples were sold by two vendors selling on the sidewalk at the corner of King Street and South Parade. They also sold candy and other sweets.
Each year at that time, the Mayor of Kingston and the police closed their eyes to another infringement of the law when they allowed vendors to take over the sidewalks of King Street - from Harbour Street to South Parade during the week before Christmas. The vendors sold squibs (firecrackers), balloons, toy pistols, starlight, and other Christmas goodies for children. They seemed to have made a lot of money, as during the 1950s they successfully pleaded to be allowed to remain on the sidewalks until New Year's Eve.
ENCOURAGED PRACTICE
I do not know if it was then, or before, that sidewalk vending became popular. I seem to recall that there was vending on the sidewalks in the tourist areas of Port Antonio, Montego Bay, and Kingston. Those vendors sold straw hats, fans and other curios to tourists and the authorities turned a blind eye to this practice.
Over the years, the police, chairmen of parochial boards and subsequent cayors were blind to this practice. The Jamaica Tourist Board also encouraged the practice. Honey vendors captured the road bank of the Sir Alexander Bustamante Highway in Clarendon; they erected stalls on the Mount Diablo road in St. Ann and with the cooperation of the parish council, the Tourist Board and a bauxite company erected the Faith's Pen roast yam, mannish water, and roasted salt fish complex near Moneague.
Fruit stalls lined both sides of the main road through Porus in Manchester. Stalls selling fabric and clothing, the most vulgar carvings and other curios appeared in Fern Gully in St. Ann. Fruit stalls were erected in the vicinity of the Flat Bridge in St. Catherine. And the sidewalks of every town in Jamaica became choked with
vendors, preventing pedestrians from using these walkways. The northern entrance to the Kingston Parish Church was once captured by vendors, and the entrance to the St. Andrew Parish Church in Half-Way Tree has now become a vending stand for newspapers on Sunday mornings.
Although some towns had food and fruit markets and the Government even erected curio markets in the main tourist centres, vendors preferred to sell on the sidewalks. And it was inevitable that they also took over some streets especially the main roads of towns all over Jamaica.
At first public vending was regarded as exotic part of the tropical flavour to attract tourists. In recent years it has become uncontrollable. Every mayor is now engaged in programmes to end this practice. And naturally there are now cries of protest, "inhuman rights and injustice and of taking away vendors' constitutional rights."
Some of our sociologists claim that the escalation of sidewalk vending is because of Government's inability to create opportunities for other meaningful employment. In another breath, these same sociologists say it is not the responsibility of Government to provide jobs and that each individual should seek out ways for creating their own economic opportunities. We, too, who stop our cars and block traffic while we purchase goods from vendors, are also at fault.
Finally, can anyone tell me: Where are the sanitary facilities used by these vendors?
