SAVANNA LA MAR, Westmoreland — “It’s time to go,” is a phrase that soup vendor Moses Gayle has used a lot since December 2024. After 30 years, he is ready to get off the streets.

“My health is not so hundred again,” he explained to the Jamaica Observer. “Thirty years [is] a long time ,but I have a retirement plan.”

Gayle currently operates a soup cart on the sidewalk outside Victoria Mutual Building Society in Savanna-la-Mar. He intends to finish refurbishing his restaurant, located at his home, and open it for business. He sees it as a much easier task than pushing his soup cart almost two miles, Mondays to Fridays, to work and back home. The hope is that his loyal customers will come along when he relocates.

Many people who grew up in Savanna-la-Mar know him as “Moses the Soup Vendor”. Boxing fans, though, can also recall his glory days in the ring.

“Mi love boxing,” Gayle told the Sunday Observer. “All inna mi sleep mi a fight.”

He started boxing at the age of 13, and for two decades that was his career. He often trained at Seaton Crescent Community Centre Boxing Gym; Robert Harris’s Gym Scape Boxing Gym in Negril; and Andrew Boland’s Hard Knox Gym in Farm Pen, Westmoreland.

Over the years Gayle represented Jamaica at the Pan American Games and other competitions, but he was forced to retire in the early 2000s due to a knee injury. It was that same knee injury which made him miss his début at the 1992 Olympic Games and handed him the only loss of his 20-year career.

With the name he had built for himself in the sport it was no surprise when in the early 1990s Gayle was called up to be an assistant trainer for Jamaica’s national team — a title he held for 14 years. There was no salary, but he made the sacrifice because of his dedication and passion for boxing.

He pumped his own money into the role, helping many pugilists from Westmoreland and other parishes achieve local and international success. Thanks to Gayle, Westmoreland became known as a boxing hub, the source for fighters across various categories.

He has a lot to boast about, but his humility will not allow him to brag. However, those in boxing circles can rattle off the impressive list of boxers who graduated from his amateur training sessions to professional levels. These include Vinroy Barrett, Lincoln Carter, Oyaine “Baby Fat” Beck, Sheldon Rudolf, Glenroy “Bumpy” Beckford, and Ramel “Sub Zero” Lewis.

“I started boxing at the age of 10,” Lewis, one of Gayle’s most successful mentees, told the Sunday Observer.

He is grateful for the impact Gayle has had on his career, and he respects him immensely.

“Mi always a gi Moses di respect and mi haffi give thanks fi him. Him help out nuff a di youth dem in di community. He was one of my trainers when I was an amateur boxer. He was definitely a mentor to me. He helped me in other ways, sometimes financially,” said Lewis.

He recalls a rigorous training regime that included early morning jogs from Savanna-la-Mar to Bluefields, every day. He never lost a fight while being trained by Gayle.

Even in those years Gayle was leaning on his cooking skills — and he was known to feed boxers during training sessions. Many of these youngsters were from lower-income communities in and around Savanna-la-Mar. The feeding programme often included breakfast and dinner.

“He was always cooking soup,” Hard Knox Boxing Gym’s Boland shared with the Sunday Observer. “Moses Gayle was a very dedicated person towards the sport. He had a feeding programme after his [training sessions]. He was a youth service by himself.”

Boland explained that many of the youth in Savanna-la-Mar would come to his gym to train because they had nothing else to do. There, they learnt to box, got help with their homework, and were fed before returning home or going off to school.

“I learnt a lot from Moses,” Boland said. “He taught me how these youth are; I did not know the youth from Westmoreland. He told me their behaviours and tendencies and how to relate with them.”

Gayle has a knack for getting along with people and has never been known to show any signs of violence outside the boxing ring. He thinks this is linked to how his parents related to each other when he was a child.

“A five house mi build an walk weh gi it to woman and pickney,” he shared. “Mi never grow a see my parents dem a fight. Dem never argue, dem never malice, so maybe that’s why mi stay suh. They were always close, and it was death that separated them. They were married for 49 years, after dating for three weeks. My mother passed away before my father, at the age of 98, and my father passed in 2019 at the age of 86.”

He also attributes his work ethic to both parents. He explained that his father, who was a cop, resigned from the police force and became a fisherman who did other jobs. Additionally, both his parents would ride to Black River on a daily basis to burn coal and then ride back together in the evening.

The beginning of Gayle’s career as a soup vendor coincided with his start at Savanna-la-Mar Senior School, now known as Godfrey Stewart High School. The eighth of his parents’ 10 children, he thought it necessary to take some of the financial burden off their shoulders.

He became an assistant for someone known only as Mr Brown, who had a soup cart. When Brown’s health deteriorated Gayle was left to operate the soup cart on his own. At the age of 18 he became his own boss, and when Brown died Gayle started operating his very own soup cart.

From his earnings over the years he helped more than 30 young men with school expenses; he has also fed countless other students, the homeless, and anyone in need.

A Jack of all trades, Gayle has dabbled in furniture building and photography. He was also a fisherman, a farmer, a painter, and he spent six years in the army before his mother — worried he would get hurt — convinced him to get out. He opened his first restaurant on Savanna-la-Mar’s Barclay Street in 2019, and later relocated to Seaton Crescent. After that folded he moved to the spot where he is now. But Gayle is determined that 2025 will not end with him still selling on the streets of Savanna-la-Mar.

Many whose lives he has touched over the years — both in his role as a boxer and soup vendor — are rooting for him.