Miss Gene’s economics
SHE’S not the traditional successful businesswoman with manicured nails, stilettos and stockings, making her fortune in an air- conditioned office in a high-rise. She does not have a degree, nor does she speaks the Queen’s English fluently, but today, Geraldine ‘Miss Gene’ Lewis has achieved more than what many who claim success have — and all from her humble trade of selling food items on piazzas in the Corporate Area.
Mi save mi money,” she told All Woman as she sat over the remainder of food items last Tuesday. “If I have a dollar and I say I am saving three cents, is that mi mean. Is save mi save,” she said. “I don’t even join partners ’cause they want to take from you and I like to put up.”
Through a commitment to saving, she has bought a three bedroom house, two vans, five acres of land and is sending her two children through high school, with plans for higher learning. She was also able to put things in place to send her daughter overseas to “better’ herself”.
This Miss Gene was able to do by sacrificing pretty clothes and an expensive lifestyle.
The only things strike my eyes then was furniture,” she explained. “Back then I used to buy mahogany furniture and I still have them today because they’re strong. So now I don’t have to buy furniture, all I do now is polish and shine.”
Miss Gene can be seen selling food items like bananas, plantains, okra, cho cho, carrots, pumpkin, Irish potatoes, East Indian mangoes, lettuce, yam, sweet potatoes and fresh fish.
“I buy fish and food stuff, like $20,000 worth of load per week. Sometimes it sell off yes, and I have to go back before the week’s done,” she said.
She said she buys her fish in a seaside community and fresh goods in the Coronation Market downtown when vendors come in from the country.
The 63-year-old said as a young girl fresh out of Cambridge All-Age in St Andrew, she spent a year working as a domestic helper. She then moved on to selling small items like tamarind balls, suck-suck (homemade juice in a bag) grater cakes, sweets, bun and cheese, donuts and biscuits at the Shortwood All-Age school.
“But the money was too small. That is why I leave,” she said. That was when she decided to take her selling to a wider market.
“I would wake up from 3:00 am and do the inside work first. Nowadays I wake up at 4:00 am,” she said.
Miss Gene said her son grew up with her parents in the country, but her daughter, who lived with her, had to learn from early to take care of herself.
“I teach her what she should do,” she said. “When she was eight I teach her how to get ready and go to school. I used to wake up and look about her breakfast and leave it on the stove. And she never late for school one morning yet!” she declared.
“I can’t complain about what I’ve achieved out of selling,” she said proudly. “I buy my house, five acres of land, buy two vans and give one to my son. He was living in the country with my mother and he would have to take my mother to the doctor so I buy it for him. The one I have is a 36-seater that I use to carry my load to and from market.”
However, she has never learnt to drive herself and has to pay persons to take her to and from market.
“I was learning to drive it and mash it up!” Miss Gene laughed. “It cost me $50,000 to fix, so I don’t bother.”
Dwayne Reid, who drove for Miss Gene for a year, described her as a very hardworking woman who never seems to stop. He said she is someone who is always trying something to make ends meet, and a woman who is always on time.
“She is more like a mother to me,” Reid said. “She would always look about breakfast and when you reach her stall and finish pack out the load you’d hear she seh she have little food you can get.”
Reid said she is a great cook and baker.
“She wicked with potato pudding. She would give you all sorts of things for breakfast — fish, ackee and susumber — all sort of things.”
In fact, he said she would make her own coconut oil at home.
Reid said Miss Gene is well respected in the community in which she lives and everybody knows ‘Miss Gene’ or ‘Fishy’ as many came to call her from her fish vending days.
He recalled how all the seats from the Hiace bus were removed and the van loaded up with food items heading to and from market.
Her business sense started when she graduated from all-age school. She was at home caring for her three small nieces when she got frustrated with the monotony. She needed to get away and she needed to make a life for herself. One day while her parents were coming through the front gate, she was heading out the back.
“When I could not take it anymore, I just walked out,” she reminisced. She was 18 years old.
“I didn’t want anybody to catch the rake so I just walk out with only the suit on my back. I did not carry anything. When my parents were coming through the front gate, I was going through the back.”
She then went to her brother but he told her she could not stay there that night. She slept outside.
“The morning I got up and washed the one underwear I had, dried it and put it on back,” she recalled. “Then I headed for the employment agency that was up Grants Pen. I told the man what I wanted, and as I sat down in the place and he called me and told me he had a family who needed someone to work.”
It was a live-in work and she was to start that very day.
“I started working for nine people for nine shillings per week,” she explained. “One year after, I bought a trunk bed and rented a room for 15 shillings.”
Along with her three bedroom house in which she lives today, the remainder of the five acre property she bought is used for farming. From this she is able to sell produce, thus reducing the amount spent on buying goods.
“I really cannot complain about what I have achieved from selling,” Miss Gene said as she sat over a variety of food items last week.