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NOTE: Terms are used
in this extract which, as Frederic Cassidy writes in Jamaica Talk, though ‘once neutral, are now considered
uncomplimentary or insulting.’ I have not edited these terms because they are part of the texture of the period in which
they were used.
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Ram John, the Callaloo Man
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| Ram John - the Callaloo Man |
Daily
Gleaner 1911
September
23 page 6
COOLIE VENDOR
The early morning
slumber of many a sleepy citizen has been rudely broken by the cry of the peripatetic vendor of vegetables who proclaims his
“fresh calla-loo, pepper, and tomatoes” for the benefit of householders. And more than once irate people have
chased the coolieman from their doors. But to no purpose, for next morning he is back in the yard again before six o’clock
clamouring out the various “greens” he carries.
‘‘No
calla-loo mamma! No gardin egg, no tomatoes, no okro, no pepper?” -
this last item being intoned in a manner that betokens something hot. And when
he is told to clear out, his language though peculiar is peppery.
More than once I
have suffered at his hands - or rather from his voice. More than once I have wished him and his goods somewhere east of Suez
where the poet tells us “there aint no ten commandments,’’ but so accustomed have I become to his shrill
wail that I somehow took forward to his call every Monday morning.
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“Baboo,”
I said to him one morning, “how much for all the vegetables in your basket ?”
“No massa,”
he answered.
Thinking he did
not grasp what I was trying to convey to him, I explained more fully.
“No,’’
he said, “you get up too early this morning’’
His remark was
true, but I, in my turn failed to understand. By a long process of arguing I discovered that what he meant was this: he declined
to sell the whole of the greens in his basket at one time. He explained that
THE MORE PEOPLE
he sold those
same things to, the more he made.
“But,’’ said I, ‘‘if you sell all that the basket contains to one person it is better
for you, and you make the same. Why look at the amount of walking you save.”
“No massa. Servant gal buy gill okro, ha’penny calla-loo and beg one pepper. Me give him.
’Nother one buy three pence garden-egg, quattie tomatoes me draw me han’ and I make more.”
The thing seemed
a puzzle and I gave it up.
I, however, discovered that after all there was method in what seemed to
me the coolie-man’s madness. By selling a farthing’s worth of his articles he gave so much less, than to the larger
dealers who purchased six pence worth of goods at a time. And for the sake of making a couple of farthings more profit - for
the whole of his stock Is never worth more than one and six, he prefers to walk all over the city and vend in small quantities.
I invited myself into his ‘‘garden’’ one day and inspected his cultivation. His Iittle
place was neat and trim. The beds were nicely laid out, and the soft green of the heads of lettuce made a pretty sight. Bordered
with parsley and interspersed with “French Beans” the vegetables
looked tempting indeed. And to complete the picture, his pepper trees with their red and yellow peppers, added the necessary
touch of colour.
The coolie man goes out twice a day regularly. His average earnings are two shillings a day, and
from this amount he not only provides for himself, but for an ever increasing family
“Tell me,” I said, “how
do you manage to get your lettuce growing so nicely?”
“Manure,”
he replied, and he shewed me his system of manuring. That has cured my liking for salad. For the system of manuring adopted
by the coolieman is something that cannot be told in print. It probably accounts for a good many of the typhoid
cases around. Anyhow, I advise the Inspectors of Nuisances to visit these coolie gardens and study their methods of manuring.
W. A. S.
The suggestion in the last paragraph is clearly
that the calla-loo man used "night soil"/human manure to fertilise his vegetable garden, which indicates a use for the night
soil which was collected by carts on the Kingston streets, after ten o'clock at night, officially, though the carts were sometimes
at work earlier than that.
back to top
BACK TO February 1-7
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