On Tuesday, a public holiday, Debbie Weeks travelled from her home at Parika to Georgetown to paint the stall on which she sells on the stretch of Merriman Mall between East and Cummings streets. She was doing this at the behest of the City Council which has roped market vendors into its urban clean-up exercise.
Tuesday was not a trading day and it was a good time to talk. At 44, Weeks has been vending on the Mall for 15 years, almost a third of her life. The Mall was significant to her in other ways, too. It was here that she had met her husband, Andrew Weeks, who had been trading on the Mall fifteen years before she got there. She says he is one of the vending pioneers on the Mall.
Weeks says she detects a stubborn sluggishness in the economy. She trades in vegetables and ground provision. Some of her supplies come from Port Kaituma. For the past four years her husband has been running an eight-acre farm there. He employs seven farmhands and every fortnight a