Sisters
Published:Thursday | November 28, 2013 | 12:00 AM
Sisters Marcia Eagle and Jestina Trought, 46 and 52, respectively, have been vendors for more than 20 years, selling a variety of fruits and vegetables at their stall in the Coronation Market. "I followed my mother to the market one day and I fell in love with it," Eagle told Food.
"I wanted to be a teacher, but then I followed my mother to the market and money start mek. And once mi start do mi ting and it a mek money, mi continue with it and forget 'bout teaching," she explained.
Her sister, however, had a different start. "My husband used to come to the market to sell the produce from the farm, but them rob him, so I started to come instead and take it over," she said. "He stays home and do the farming full-time," she explained.
The sisters told Food that they consider being a "higgla" a job just like any other. "It inna we genes," Marcia laughed, adding, "people weh sell ah market ah independent people, and the only difference between we and the supermarkets is that dem have dem big official establishments, but we contribute to society, too. Somebody affi do it," she said.
"Supermarkets get dem goods from down here, too," she said.
They told Food that they would normally come into Kingston from Mount Airey in the hills of Mocho, Clarendon, on Sunday nights with tomatoes, pumpkins, pears, vegetables and fruits, and go back home on a Thursday.