FOR 26 years, Hyacinth Brown has been a vendor, selling fish from a stall on the Portmore Causeway that links Kingston to the suburban St Catherine community.

Monday, June 26, was a typical day.

“Sell me a pound of doctor fish, please,” says a customer.

Brown, 49, rises immediately from her seat, takes up a handful of fish – she wears no gloves – weighs it and replies: “$180 per pound.”

The customer nods acceptance. Brown then scales the fish, cuts away the fins and remove ‘dangerous bones’ before washing and packing the purchase in newspaper.

Money changes hands and the deal is sealed.

As a neophyte vendor at age 23, Brown started out selling sweets and cigarettes to local fishermen who supplied the Causeway Fishing Village sellers.

But she supplied the fishermen on credit, and soon had no money to replace her stock.

She confided her troubles to a friend, whose advice led her to change course.

“He said: ‘Me have two boat pon the causeway; me going to make you sell fish. Just come wid a scale an’ a Igloo the next morning’,” said Brown, who is originally from St Elizabeth and speaks a mixture of English and patois.

“That is how we start,” she told the Sunday Observer, amidst sales.

Brown is a trained seamstress, but it is selling that she loves.

“I start working as early as 7:00 am … and by 12:00 noon me finish sell,” she said of her early venture into fish vending.

Then, Brown had no stall of her own, but the village had fewer vendors, so business was more brisk.

Brown has advanced since then.

Her No 9 stall: ‘Hyacinth Fresh Fish – Daily’ was laden Monday with a variety of fish – including, parrot, jack, the famous snapper and butter fish, goat, grunt and doctor fish – priced from $150 to $250 per pound.

Her clients are largely persons from Kingston, she said, backed by a few who live in Portmore.

Brown tells the Sunday Observer that she earns up to $10,000 per week when the weather is fair and the fishermen’s catches are good.

It is on this income that she takes care of her family – she is a single mother of five – and even manages the odd trip abroad.

But with fish as her primary source of income, Brown says she dreads the rainy times.

Then, her income is reduced by $2,000 to $3,000, she added.

“Those times is very hard, but we try to manage. When we earn $10,000, we throw partner and open a savings account.”

It is this money that she draws on when business is slow, she said.

Soon, she will grapple with even more uncertainty, with the planned relocation of the Causeway Fishing Village to the Jamworld Sports Complex within the heart of Portmore.

The vendors are being moved to make way for the highway construction and expansion of the Kingston transshipment port.

They were moved once already by the National Road Operating and Construction Company (NROCC) to a different point on the Causeway as work progressed on the new toll highway and six-lane bridge that will replace the causeway.

NROCC is the government agency with oversight for the highway construction, being developed and operated by the French company Bouygues Travaux through a network of local companies that includes TransJamaican Highway and Jamaica Infrastructure Operators.

“We came over here and made ourselves comfortable; they called it a beach, but it wasn’t one. Now that these people come in, NROCC or some other big authority say they need the beach for a road,” said Brown.

“They organise to pay we $10,000 to come off the road and come over this side, to build a highway,” she said.

However: “When we come over here, the Port Authority come and gave us seven days notice an’ say: ‘No, you cyan come on dis side’, because they want the land to build a wharf.”

But, Brown and the other vendors are refusing to move again.

She is, however, in support of the toll highway, saying it spells progress.

“When I come here in the 1980s, we did not have any road – just a little passage. It is legal for us to have good roads,” said Brown.

“Anywhere you go in the world, you have to pay a toll. When I go to Miami, I had to pay and my niece had to pay, and we are Jamaican citizens. I don’t have a problem with the toll road,” the fish vendor said.

Her more immediate worry is increasing competition from vendors who have swelled the village in the two decades she has been there.

The quarrels over customers are frequent, she said, but adds that there is never any bitterness.

“Sometimes we the vendors are at war with each other, and curse out each other for the sale. This one run to a car and say, ‘a me firs go deh’, and me say, ‘a me firs’, and then we have a conversation (quarrel),” she said.

“But little after it gone back to normal, we don’t carry feelings.”

Brown plans to remain a vendor and will only hand over her business to her children, she said, when she is no longer able to run her stall.

editorial@jamaicaobserver.com