Immortalised in the popular Jamaican folk song, Linstead Market is home to a colourful cast of vendor personalities, with stalls stocked with a distinct array of farm-fresh produce and veggies as Thursday Life went a-calling last weekend. Get your shopping list ready as we venture to the iconic St Catherine space to see a Saturday market day in action.

The Linstead Market of today is markededly different from the one of the past. While not aesthetic perfection, in the 40-plus years that octogenarian Juletta Stuart has been a vendor in the St Catherine township, the market has been transformed from an open lot to a sheltered, one-storey building (albeit, with a roof that currently needs urgent replacement) where vendors are required to pay a daily fee to sell their produce. “It wasn’t like this,” a fedora-wearing Stuart tells us. With small stacks of coconuts, June plums, nutmegs and plantains lying on a crocus bag-lined display before her, Stuart, sitting on a stool and initially a tad hesitant to engage our enquiries, volunteers: “We used to be on an open compound before this was built.”

While happy with the transformation, the elderly vendor is, however, unhappy with the economic shift that the passage of time has dealt to her earnings.

“Everything gone down flat,” she bemoans. “Sales bad now; first time you could get money and hold onto it, but now the money not really there, and it goes so fast.”

The complaint of slower-paced sales is not singularly hers. It’s oft-repeated by other vendors with whom we interface as we troll around the market.

The violet-haired Herma Hunt feels a turn in the tide. “Sometimes business is bad, sometimes good,” she notes. A veteran vendor in the Linstead Market, Hunt started selling there at 18. “When I was going to high school, I had to come and sell to help make up my lunch money,” she recalls.

Counting Saturday as one of the market’s better sale days, Hunt tells us that the recent drought has created a scarcity for some goods, and caused price hikes for a number of items including tomatoes (which presently surpass $200 for a dozen) and lettuce (now $400 a head).

Fluctuating earnings notwithstanding, the stocky and spirited vendor, much like her peers, has a fondness for her job. “I love what I do because it makes me independent,” enthuses Hunt.

Melvill Drummond — whose stall of yams, bananas, carrots, sweet potatoes and corn is mere steps away from Hunt’s — is thankful and always eager to show up to sell in the market, which he has done for the last 12 years.

“It helps me to send my kids to school and take care of my family,” the good-natured and chatty Drummond divulges. A Clarendon-based farmer, he says his day in the market typically begins at 5:00 am, but could be later, depending on his ability to access a route taxi to transport him. The workday for him ends when he has parted with most of his stock. “Me not going home until me sell off,” he shares.

We soon make acquaintance with Latoya Lee, yet another chirpy vendor. Lee made the transition from selling clothes to produce and veggies five years ago. “I used to sell clothes, then I thought maybe I should do food because food is a must,” she explains. With clothing vendors populating the market in equal numbers as food vendors, Lee is grateful for having pulled a switcheroo, seeing better sales. “It’s up and it’s down,” Lee notes. “But I really like it.”

— Omar Tomlinson