Fruit and Vegetables

It was 1977, and I was strolling through Kingstown waiting for the Friendship Rose to depart. It happened to be market day, and for a newcomer to the Caribbean the mounds of produce displayed on rickety stands were awfully confusing. Some of the vegetables such as carrots, cabbage, eggplant and sweet peppers were recognizable, although from their wizened appearance none looked particularly appetizing. There were also piles of brown, hairy-looking items, which I later discovered were eddoes, dasheen and tannia. I had never seen mangoes or papayas before, but at least had a glimmering of what they WERE. The rest of the fruit on display was a complete mystery to me, I obviously had a lot to learn about Caribbean fruit and vegetables!

I quickly discovered that if I wanted any vegetables at ALL I had to give a   list to one of the vegetable ladies by Friday at the latest. Saturday was market day on the mainland, and a few women boarded the Friendship Rose and braved the channel each week in order to supply Bequians with produce. This system worked fine as long as your personal buyer had the “wish list”, but many times the items you wanted weren’t available. I had to make do with whatever I received, and as I wasn’t much of a cook it didn’t matter much!

Times changed. The Friendship Rose stopped running on Saturdays, making the weekly “wish list” a thing of the past. Fruit and vegetable vendors, mostly from the mainland, began to make an appearance; the Canadian government paid for the construction of a fish and vegetable market, and soon we were able to buy produce whenever we wanted. By then Mac and I had opened the Pizzeria, and salads, until then pretty much non-existent, were slowly added to restaurant menus because lettuce was finally being grown. Such progress!

Today there are several vendors selling fruit and vegetables on Bequia, and it’s a treat to be able to shop for fresh produce on any day of the week instead of just Saturdays. Sometimes tomatoes and lettuce are scarce, and prices have soared through the roof, but at least the option to buy without having to cross the channel exists! However, I DID take one particular vendor to task a few years ago when she erected a sign claiming that her produce was organically grown. She wasn’t pleased to be told it wasn’t honest to be hawking carrots that had obviously been imported (local carrots look and taste much different) in such a manner, and we had a rather heated discussion about the “organic” sign. Her response to my objections made perfect sense to her;

(This is NOT a picture of the “organically grown” vendor!)

“But Judy, organic is what de tourist dem want”.

(This is NOT a picture of the “organically grown” vendor!)

The vendor didn’t have a clue what “organically grown” meant, but was clever enough to know that the discerning tourist would happily buy her carrots because they were organic, and therefore better than those being sold by other vendors.

Times have changed indeed!