Charity’s Monday Market serves as a trading post for buyers and sellers who come from distances as far apart as Georgetown and the small sleepy villages of the North West District. Markets can be much more than places where goods are bought and sold. They are, sometimes, events, outings, familiar meeting places, even places where people entertain themselves. Charity’s Monday Market offers a little bit of everything.’
It is, however, about trading first. If you travel to Charity on Mondays you might see merchants who customarily do business in Georgetown offering sewing machines, generators and fridges for sale. In the same setting, the farmers from Pomeroon do brisk business, offering fruit and vegetables, cultivated on huge farms along the river. Additionally, they offer beverages, primarily coconut water, a reminder that the coconut industry in the Pomeroon is one of the biggest in the country.
Patrick and Genevieve Goocharran reside at Siriki on the banks of the Pomeroon River. They have been selling cassava bread and casareep at Charity for more than ten years. Much of the cassava from which the products are made comes from their own farm. Five hundred pounds of bitter cassava will give