I used to accompany my grandmother as a little boy to the market. Sunday morning market is a whole different culture and coming together of our people. It was those memories that spurred this week’s piece ...
By 5 am, the Port-of-Spain Market was already alive. Blue tarpaulins flapped in the soft breeze drifting up from the Gulf. The smell of fresh chadon beni, mixed with ripe tomatoes and wet earth from the ground provisions stacked high on wooden trays. Dasheen, cassava, eddoes, sweet potato, all lined up like soldiers on parade.
Ras leaned back against a bag of yams, stroking his grey beard, as he puffed on a spliff. He had been there longer than most could remember.
Next to him, Vincy was sprinkling water from a barrel on some heaps of water crest. He arranged his bundles of thyme and parsley with the precision of a surgeon. Born in St Vincent, he “come off the boat” decades ago by the old Caricom jetty and never left. The market was his university, his parliament, his church.
Ms Sookoo was fanning herself with yesterday’s newspaper.
Shortman was slicing open a bag of red, seven vein peppers, while Pablo, the Venezuelan who had “fall in the groove,” was weighing tomatoes and humming a calypso he never knew the words to.
The talk, like always, was politics.
“Allyuh hear what the PM say at the Caricom meeting?” Shortman started, wiping his knife on a rag.
“She say, ‘Who vex loss.’”
Ras chuckled.
“That have plenty meaning, you know. That is like saying, ‘I go talk my mind. If yuh offended, that is yuh problem.’”
Ms Sookoo nodded slowly.
“Well, she talking bold. But bold talk have to come with bold results.”
Vincy twisted up his mouth.
“Results? After Carnival finish, look the killings. Like if the band strike up again, but this time is gunshot.” Double murder. Triple murder.”
The market got quiet for a second. Everybody knew it was true. The weeks after Carnival had been rough. Murders stacking up like crates. Communities tense. Mothers crying on morning radio programmes. The spike was sharp and sudden, and the whispers were that the police couldn’t manage the surge.
“Police overwhelmed, mi amigo,” Pablo said carefully, his accent still thick but softer now.
“Too much gangs. Too much retaliation. Teeng outta hand.”
Ras shook his head.
“It deeper than that. When lawman and outlaw start to look the same, is trouble.”
Ms Sookoo glanced around before lowering her voice. “Yuh mean them corrupt officers?”
Ras didn’t answer directly. He just raised an eyebrow. Everybody in the market had heard stories: officers tipping off gang members before raids, evidence disappearing, certain names never getting called. Not all police, of course.
Vincy slammed down a bundle of celery.
“Every time it spike, what we does get? SoE...”
They all laughed, but it was a tired laugh.
“Boy,” Ms Sookoo sighed, “SoE used to mean something serious. Army in the road. Curfew. Big constitutional move.”
She tapped the newspaper.
“Now is like we wake up Monday morning, boil bush tea, and hear, boom, ah next SoE.”
Ras leaned forward.
“Emergency supposed to be exceptional. Rare. A last resort. When the system reach breaking point.”
He paused.
“But if every few month is ah emergency, then what is normal?”
That question hung heavy in the humid air.
Pablo weighed another pound of tomatoes.
“In my country, emergency become permanent. Then people stop reacting. They just adjust.”
“Exactly!” Vincy pointed at him.
“That is the danger. When SoE become routine, it water down the meaning.”
He turned to Ras.
“....and the TTPS, the police service, can’t make it look like is standard operating procedure. Because emergency powers is serious thing. It bypass normal safeguards you know.”
A young Indian boy zig-zagged through the crowd pushing a cart of crates and boxes.
Vincy leaned closer.
“But back to the PM statement. ‘Who vex loss.’”
He grinned.
“That kind of talk does play good in the market. Is strong talk. Is defiant.”
Ras raised one finger.
“Defiance must be matched with discipline. Otherwise is just performance Gih dem performance!”
Everybody started to laugh.
Ms Sookoo clapped her fan shut.
“I don’t mind strong leadership. But we need strategy. Not just speech.”
“Strategy and sustainability,” Pablo added.
“Exactly,” Ras said.
“If SoE is temporary, what happen when it lift? Crime supposed to stay down. You can’t be jumping to emergency every time the thermometer rise.”
Shortman scratched his head.
“So what allyuh saying? No SoE?”
Ras shrugged.
“Sometimes it necessary. But it must be rare. Targeted. Backed by long-term reform ... and the public must trust the people enforcing it.”
They all laughed again. The market noise swelled, vendors calling out prices, PH taxis honking, hustling short drop up the hill, steelpan ringtone playing from somebody’s phone.
“Yuh know,” Pablo said quietly, “in the end, we just want to sell we goods in peace.”
“Peace and profit,” Shortman corrected him.
A customer approached asking for seasoning. Ms Sookoo jump into action. As she handed over the bag, she turned back to the group.
“Look, allyuh. Government go say what they have to say. ‘Who vex loss.’ Fine. But we, the people, living with the consequences.”
The group bursted out laughing. Another morning in the market. Another debate. Another State of Emergency. But between the dasheen and the tomatoes, between the laughter and the worry, there was something steady, a belief that ordinary people, plying honest trade, deserved more than cycles of crisis. The sun climbed higher over Port-of-Spain.
As Ras called out prices and Pablo counted change, the conversation drifted back to pepper, seasoning, and who owed who five dollars. Because in the market, like in the nation, life doesn’t pause for politics. It just continues. So….whoever vex? Well...loss.
