Gungo peas! Gungo peas! - Reporters find that being a market vendor requires nerve of steel

After a brief foray as market vendors in downtown Kingston yesterday, reporters Simone Morgan-Lindo and Shanel Lemmie left with new-found respect for the hard-working men and women who provide the nation with fresh produce.

The two reporters were assigned to go into the heart of downtown Kingston in order to experience what it was like to sell in the market. The challenge was to sell six quarts of gungo peas, a staple in Jamaican Christmas dinner. The peas were packaged into nine parcels — three packages of pints and six half pints.

Prior to venturing into downtown Kingston with the goods, the reporters, with the help of Daraine Luton, the editor of THE STAR; and Kaymar Jordan, the Gleaner company’s editor-in-chief, spent just over an hour shelling nine pounds of gungo peas that were purchased from a vendor in Coronation Market on Wednesday.

Simone was no good at shelling the peas. She took more than an hour to fill a 12-ounce cup of gungo peas.

“My extra-long fingernails made the job more difficult and I had to take a snack break in between shelling,” Simone said.

“When I was a youngster, removing the peas from its pods was effortless and one of my favourite pastime during the Yuletide season, but now it is a cumbersome task,” she added.

Shanel, who had equally long nails, made light work of shelling the peas. In fact, she shelled about two quarts of peas. Daraine was the top sheller.

Yesterday was the day of reckoning for the reporters who were trying to prove that they could hold their own. You could tell that they were nervous.

Shanel took up five parcels of peas (three half pints and two pints) and readied herself to go into the marketplace to find buyers. Simone, with her game face on, grabbed the remaining four parcels (one pint and three half pints).

There was, however, a major hurdle to overcome — nerves.

“Faces marked with displeasure and a seeming knowledge that two girls accompanied by a cameraman could only mean something bothersome,” was Shanel’s assessment of the situation.

Simone, though, pretended as if she had it all figured out, but after her first attempt to secure a sale fell flat, she quickly reassessed.

“I asked a male who was waiting on a bus if he was interested. Without taking time to think about it, he shook his head,” Simone related.

She turned to Kenyon Hemans, the photographer, for help.

“A suh yuh fi dweet. Gungo peas! Gungo peas!”, Hemans said, waving the parcels over his head.

Shanel took notes and went about getting about her business, trying to sell her product.

“Aunty, yuh a buy gungo peas? Any gungo fi yuh, Uncle?” she asked as she roamed about a section of South Parade. It worked!

She was barely there for 10 minutes and all her peas were sold. Simone, however, was not so prolific and needed help. Shanel went to lend a hand.

A pint of gungo peas goes for the market price of $400, but the ladies decided that we wanted to take the quick sale, small profit route so they deducted $100.

“Buy out di gungo dem” Simone yelled. She caught the attention of a female who needed a bag. Her confidence level was boosted and within a minute she had sold a second bag.

But the ladies, in the short time, found out that there are persons in the space who are more interested in picking up women than purchasing farm produce.

“We were down to our last bags and I tried to coerce a few men to make a purchase, but they were more interested in taking me home for the holidays,” Simone said.

The perverts aside, the reporters ensured that an assignment that took several hours of preparation and planning was quite enjoyable. The downside, however, is that they failed to make a return on their investment, which makes it difficult to recommend that they consider vending as a serious vocation unless their understanding of the market changes.