Everywhere we live, mankind develops mechanisms to cope with what my friend Vic Insanally calls “worries”, and as Vic along with most folks will tell you, “Guyana got plenty worries, buddy.”
While I am not sure how most folks cope with “worries”, there are two strategies I employ, one quite unlike the other, as an antidote, or diversion, from the despair that can sometimes overtake you from dealing with the daily traumas.
The first one is to simply unplug. Don’t pick up the newspapers for a day, which is to say: blot out the worries for a spell. If you have to read, read a novel, or some poetry. Read anything, even a soup-can label, but don’t read the newspapers; none of them; not even this one. If you must turn on the TV, avoid the local channels. Watch National Geographic; you can even watch that stupid American guy with the parrot who does Caribbean weather reports; if you’re desperate enough watch “Desperate Housewives”, but ignore local newscasts on TV or radio. Just blot it all out for a day or so.
The second thing you do is you plug in. Engage yourself with some aspect of this culture that draws you, that makes you smile, that takes you into the positive side of mankind; that brightens your spirit. For me, that means a visit to Bourda.
Fifteen minutes in Bourda, any hour, any day is an uplifting experience. The people you encounter there, particularly the vendors, are so invigorating, so pumped up – I was going to say it’s almost tangible; in fact it is tangible. It grabs you, almost as some of the vendors grab you, and you find yourself laughing at something, or noticing some little move – like the lady the other day, taking money from a customer with one hand, and waving a soursop at me with the other.
Even before you get in the market itself, the people on the North Road perimeter, often in outlandish dress (and don’t talk about the hairdos) are getting your attention with some gesticulation, or some pithy comment, or offering you, as one lady told me, “the freshest, the sweetest and the cheapest.” Bourda people are humming with life.
Inside, Bourda Market is the great equaliser. To go in there is to come down to one level. There are no big shots in Bourda; no people with their nose in the air; nobody pulling rank. Everybody is coping with the rundown structure, and the lack of light, and the crowded conditions, and the clutter. In there, as Canary says, all o’ we is one. If there’s anything briga about you, drop it before you enter Bourda; briga won’t last five minutes in there.
The vendors in the market are a particular breed of people, as if they went to some Bourda Market School somewhere to learn the Bourda way. Everybody talks to everybody as one. You could have $50,000 in your pocket or $200 – the Bourda vendor treats you the same way, gives you the same price.
Probably because they are all people struggling to make a living in far from ideal conditions, the people who sell in Bourda have an air of quiet perseverance about them. It’s a positive vibration, front to back. Also, although it’s obviously hard work – just moving all that produce in and out daily must be a grind – the people are upbeat; it is rare to see an ill-tempered seller in Bourda. It’s simply a friendly atmosphere.
At the same time, however they are not pushovers. Perhaps on the basis that everybody can have a bad day, someone being rude to a vendor in Bourda might get away with it briefly, but keep it up and you’ll get called. One day recently, a Chinese young man wearing a kind of Mao jacket comes into the market pushing a bicycle. I’m not making this up; yes, a bicycle, in those narrow passageways. To make matters worse, he leans the bicycle up against a stall. The vendor, a middle-aged black woman, doesn’t move her head, but she turns her eyes upward at him. She doesn’t say a word, but I know my people; I figure she’s giving him maximum two minutes to come to his senses. He examines her produce slowly, but before he can even choose something, his two minutes must have passed. From her sitting position, the vendor erupts: “Chinee! You is a madman or wha’? Move yuh damn bicycle from hay.” Mao, to his credit, says not a word, but grabs his bicycle and scuttles away. The vendor lets out a steups you could hear over on Church Street. She looks at me imploringly: “You evah see my crosses?” I just love these people.
Unlike many markets in other countries where vendors come at you like hawks, the people selling at Bourda don’t get in your face. They proffer their goods, and if you’re not interested they may offer alternatives, but they don’t push – perhaps that’s another lesson they learned at the Bourda School.
Also, the people selling there are like a family, sometimes swapping produce, making change for each other, or even holding on at a neighbouring stall when needed. Talk about a coalition; there’s a real one operating in there.
Most of all, a trip to Bourda will lift your spirits because it’s a place where laughter abounds; light-hearted views are all around you, and tantalizing is a way of life, Even the complaints in Bourda have a sweet tinge to them – a little sugar water, you know what I mean? Last week, with a blackout on, a lady tells her vendor, “I can’t see what to buy. You want me to sell you a generator?” A customer nearby chimes in, “When you come hay yuh better walk wid a torchlight.”
Best of all, as a regular to Bourda, sooner or later, you will be treated to our irrepressible sense of humour. For instance, last Saturday I’m leaving the market and a stall holder says to me, “Yuh should write someting about dis place.” He points to a young man who is unloading some items for him. “Look at he. He seh he is a rasta. Wha’ kin’ a rasta you is, eating pork?” He says to me, “Yuh evah hear anyting suh?” I respond, “Dat soun’ strange yes.” The young man straightens up with a big smile and says to me, “Doan worry wid he. He only carryin’ on suh cause he’s mi wife.”
Classic tantalise; classic counterattack; classic Bourda.
