At 37 and a father of four, Seon London or ‘Passion’, as he is commonly known, has had no option but to take life and its responsibilities seriously. Like some others of the young men born and raised in the village of Victoria on the East Coast of Demerara, he grew up without the benefit of the proverbial ‘silver spoon’ in his mouth, his formal schooling limited to attending the Enmore Hope Primary School and afterwards the Bygeval Secondary School. His father was a policeman and his mother a cosmetologist and that was as much as circumstances afforded him. There might have been a time when he would have been expected to follow in the footsteps of his father and join the police force. As it happened his passion like his mother’s, was for body beauty and it was that that eventually shaped his calling.
As the tender age of twelve ‘Passion’ developed an interest in the art of styling and cutting hair so that his time after school was spent with his mother learning from her and simultaneously enhancing his own skills. Not unexpectedly, he opened his own Barber Shop shortly after leaving secondary school, a makeshift facility inside a modest, rented space in Victoria, secured with the support of his parents.
Small, closely knit communities can sometimes prove fertile ground for startup businesses in the service sector, clientele growing largely through patronage. So it was with ‘Passion’ and his barber shop. Out of the kinship arising out of being part of the same village, residents of the community responded to his entrepreneurial initiative.
Mindful that a growing clientele provided an opportunity for strategic diversification, ‘Passion’ opened a snackette alongside his barber shop, offering aerated drinks, pastries and Sunshine snacks to customers awaiting his professional attention. Always with an eye to upward mobility, he subsequently recently relocated to Belfield, the village east of Victoria, moving into a modest building that he has had erected. Businesses in neighbouring rural communities where the country’s two major ethnic groups live virtually side by side frequently play an important social role and so it has been with ‘Passion’s’ Belfield Barber Shop. In its own modest way it has created links among a handful of communities including Cove and John and Nooten Zuil, largely populated by Indo-Guyanese on the one hand, and Belfield and Victoria, largely populated by Afro-Guyanese on the other.
Inside the barber shop, thoughtfully named ‘Another Level,’ I engaged in a brief `gyaff’ with ‘Passion’. Much to my surprise he disclosed that his clientele extended way beyond the neighbouring villages, and included customers from as far as Georgetown, Berbice and even Essequibo. Why would a person travel such distances for a haircut? I surmised that the reason reposed in the fact that his skillful hands may be the creator of unique fresh fades or perhaps clean line-ups that particularly pleased his far-flung clientele. I didn’t bother to ask, though in a sense, I may well have gotten an answer from one of his clients who subsequently regaled me with details of the therapeutic experience of visiting Another Level. “Some days I don’t need a haircut. I come here after a hard day’s work to relax a little.” Randolph Van Nooten, another client of the barber shop says of ‘Passion’: “he’s the best around here. I haven’t come across anyone else with his class.”
As is often the case with Barber Shops, ‘Another Level’ has become a popular meeting place, a sort of People’s Parliament, where everything, from the popular political currents to domestic issues is ventilated by loquacious gatherings. The discourses can cover a stunningly wide gamut of issues. The one on which I managed to eavesdrop had to do with the evolution of popular music through the nineties to today and the extent to which the lyrics of popular songs influence the behaviour of listeners. Barbering apart, ‘Passion’ has voluntarily undertaken the role of mentor to a handful of young men in the community. One of them, Tyrone Simone, has since gone on to owning his own barber shop in Cove and John.
‘Passion’s’ entrepreneurial journey has now taken him beyond barbering. Recently he acquired a barbecue grill which he presses into service on holidays, grilling chicken and offering the popular dish with fries. He also rents his grill to persons in the community for parties, take-away-lunches and other events.
More recently, ‘Passion’s’ interests have drifted into agriculture. These days, he spends such spare time as he has perfecting his kitchen garden, providing fresh vegetables including celery, sweet peppers, cabbage and calalloo for his own dinner table. Occasionally, he would sell modest consignments of greens to other residents. His life may not yet be complete but at least he has had the good fortune of creating a niche that allows him to earn and to grow simultaneously…which is more than many young men growing up in poor rural communities in Guyana can boast.
