Much of the ‘hustle and bustle’ associated with aspects of commercial life in the capital is linked to the ‘goings on’ in and around our Municipal Markets………..Bourda Market is no exception. The facility has earned its own unique place in the various writings on some of the standout features of commercial life in the Capital.
Glimpses into its historical background have told us, repeatedly, that it is a “twentieth Century Market,” insofar as the current structure is a replacement for the 1880 edifice which, some of the literature says ”was later re-built in 1902 to facilitate the growing number of vendors and consumers.”
While we are told that Bourda is considered “the second largest market in the Capital, after Stabroek, the contemporary evidence suggests that, these days, it could do with more add-ons.
The Market itself (and here one has to take account of both the interior of the edifice as well as its external surroundings) has, these days, ventured well beyond its previous physical boundaries, the ‘extensions’ in terms of vending, pushing the market in generous portions of both Robb street and Bourda Street.
Bourda Green, once the locale for public events that included political gatherings quite a few decades ago, was eventually surrendered, mostly, to vendors offering ‘greens and provision’ from ‘stalls’ separated from the bare ground by wooden Pallets.
In the matter of the Bourda Green some things have changed radically. The ‘Green’ itself appears to have been mostly ‘abandoned’ by the women shouting the offerings on their Pallets, the Stabroek Business’ recent probe of the locale suggesting that the ‘Green’ is populated by vendors only on its fringes, and that inside its ‘belly it appears to have become home to an assortment of vagrants and Dickensian characters who, save and except, when the rain falls in torrents (in which circumstances the Green becomes altogether uninhabitable) appear to call the area ‘home.’
Bourda Market, however, for all of its transformations, endure, the various transformations failing to disguise the substantive purpose of the facility. The Fish Pond and the Beef Stalls have remained the Market’s Aesthetic ‘high points’ and if the infuriating traffic congestion on a portion of Robb street created by the commercial ‘crush’ can be infuriating to vehicles having no interest in what the Market has to offer, then they have little choice but to ‘grin and bear it.’
Bourda Market endures with its ‘crush’ and its charms and with its successive generations of vendors whose faces mirror those of their predecessors.
Other things have changed too…………like what these days are the etched frowns of the faces of those Market goers, who, having caught sight of those advertised prices that send unmistakable messages that the cost of living ‘goin up,’ adorn their faces with altogether appropriate frowns.
