Saturday, May 31, 2008

I got off to an even later start this week. I went to a fundraiser for the Sunshine Girls (Jamaican Netballers) on Friday night and didn't get home until very late . Going to bed at 12 Midnight is late for me so when I awoke sometime after five I was still groggy and tired. I dragged myself out of bed and set about getting ready to go to the market. At 6:21 am I drove through my gate and headed for downtown. It was overcast, thanks to the remnants of the weather we had been having the last few days. Overcast is good sometimes;hopefully it means cooler. However I was expecting the market to be muddy and messy thanks to the days of rain.

I got a fairly close parking spot that someone vacated as I was arriving. I was hoping not to spend as much time this week as I felt so tired and didn't really feel up to it. Also I wasn't going to buy as much as the week before because I didn't need as much stuff nor did I have as much cash on hand. You need hard cash to shop in the market. They don't take debit or credit cards (and they dont trust(sell & collect later)). I always thought this cash only system was a drawback because you have to plan ahead in order to have enough money on hand to shop and these days people don't like to walk around with too much cash. You not only need cash, you need change (50 & 100 bills, as well as coins) as most of the sellers don't have any at the start of the day. It would certainly be a great opportunity for someone to have a stall that accepted cards, not to mention safer.

Back to Saturday
It was wet and muddy as I suspected. The vendors had put banana trash on the ground in some places to sop up some of the water. In other places there were pools of dirty water. I stepped gingerly in some areas and turned back in others. I changed my routine slightly as I started outside instead of going straight into the building itself. I decided it was best to buy the hardier stuff like the carrots & cucumbers first and buy things like papaya and bananas later so that they wouldn't sit in the hot car for too long.

Dogs & Mangoes
I bought carrots from my regular lady at $50/lb. but again there was no cucumber in sight. I had to go look for the lady I had bought from last week. They weren't as nice as before but they were $10.00 more, but I didn't really have a choice as it seems to be quite scarce. She's the same person from whom I'd gotten the beef mangoes, but I cut my eyes at those and bought black mangoes, which she had as well. Both were the same price, $100/dozen. Some people would think I'm crazy buying common mangoes and at that price. What to do; We like them but we don't have a tree and no one's offered me any lately. I'm not going to steal them like the man stealing the East Indian mangoes from my neighbours tree yesterday. I heard her ordering him out of the tree. I looked through my window and there he was in the middle of the day with a big bag in hand climbing out of the tree. I guess the only reason why they haven't visited us yet is because of the dogs, But they didn't even bark until the neighbour made an alarm. Hopefully they'll be a little more vigilant with ours especially since they're the ones eating most of them. Did you know that dogs ate mangoes? Well we discovered to our detriment when we had several trees at the last house. They had so much that they would hide some for later. We would find mangoes buried all over the yard. We were in direct competition for the mangoes that fell off the trees. If you thought you heard one fall you had to rush out to get it before one of them did; I didn't mind them eating a few, but the more they ate the more stuff they excreted and they don't clean up after themselves.

But to the market
I tried to be quick so I could go home and sleep. I bought a soursop for $160.00 ($80/lb); a breadfruit from St. Thomas for $70.00 (you have to choose the breadfruit and then they'll give it a price); a hand of bananas for less then $150.00 (these were not the pretty yellow ones, but my stomach does not discriminate); papayas for $50/lb (they seem to have settled at that price); large salad tomatoes at about $40/lb and onions at $40.00 also. The market was noisy and some people were quarrelling as I made my way at the far end. I was ready to fall asleep. It was time to go.

The shocker came as I was driving off and gave a junior parking person(I've decided to be nice) my $50.00; he tells me that come next week the parking fee would be $70.00. I now had something to think about before my next market trip.

LMWorks

lm works ... in more ways