LOOKA LEW: Evuh body selling . . .

Things brown, brown and everybody selling. We got some people bout here baking and selling sweet bread that taste like carpet and would break out your teeth. Them harder than cement blocks, but them ain’t care – them selling bread. And do you know why?
It is because people smelling hell, so they looking for ways to make a dollar bill. And one way, it seems, to make piece o’ money is to sell something to eat, cause Bajans love them guts.
So we got people in every district selling some kinda food. And some people know exactly what them doing. They real good at this cooking thing, because they either had some form of culinary training or them is natural cooks.
They could take a shoe heel, season it, fry it and it would taste like steak. On the other hand, give some people a steak to do and by the time them finish with it, it taste like a shoe heel, but they selling.
Them got some people selling pudding and souse.
It taste so bad that you ask yourself how comes the police ain’t got them lock up yet. But every Saturday, them got long lines outside them house with customers, ’cause them using a secret Bajan ingredient name “come-tuh-muh”, with a pinch of obeah.
Yes, people selling. All on the highway people selling coconut water, ackees, dunks and nuts. And who ain’t selling food, trying a thing with home accessories. They in the workplace trying to selling them colleagues bathroom sets, sheets and curtains and even panties and men’s underwear. A young girl even pass by my workplace taking orders from the ladies for adult toys.
So everybody selling, and it is not uncommon to see children helping their parents with the selling. All like now vacation time you would see children in town helping their mother sell plantains or in the food stalls wrapping forks and washing and peeling vegetables. Which is good, ’cause it gives children a chance to understand entrepreneurship, and chances are, them would also get a li’l berry for working with mum, which leads me to this.
Week before, I saw a young fella, no more than 12 years old, on a bicycle with a see-through plastic haversack on his back. Inside this bag was some peanuts, mints and some other snacks. it also had in cigarettes, wrappers, playing cards and dice.
Well, I malicious, so I ask him who the bag belonged to. He said it was his, then I ask him if he does smoke cause I saw cigarettes in the bag. He tell me no – he does sell. So I ask him where he get cigarettes from to sell. He told me that his mother does give him them to sell on the block. Cigarettes? So I ask him if he does sell weed too. He tell me no, only what I see in the bag.
Now to me, if a child is selling wrappers, cards and cigarettes, chances are the environment he is going around to sell them can’t be age appropriate.
But look who is sending him there – his mother.
So while people selling food and home accessories, to me she is selling her son.
Which some would argue is not as bad as the mothers who does sell them daughters. By that I mean, bringing in big hard back men to sleep with them girl children for money.
Yes, things brown, and everybody selling, but them got some things we should never sell.
See ya.