The More Things Change...Nassau's Straw Market Controversy

by Larry Smith

"The daily passage of market women up and down Market Street, under the stone arch named after Govenor Gregory, completed in 1852, was one of the picturesque Nassau sights. Some vendors walked great distances, their goods expertly balanced in flat wooden trays on their heads."-- Islanders in the Stream, by Gail Saunders & Michael Craton.

It seems that the more things change in Nassau, the more they stay the same. The following comment was written to a local newspaper in 1880, and we are still making the same complaints today.

"Anyone walking down Bay Street may count dozens of lewd characters of both sexes lurking especially in the vicinity of Vendue House using most obscene language...while perchance may be seen a policeman listlessly walking by, apparently heedless of what is happening."

Vendue House - now the Pompey Museum - was already a century old when that letter to the editor was written. It had been built on the site of an earlier market (at the junction of George and Bay Streets) to process the arrival of enslaved Africans.

Soon after, another market was set up on the waterfront further east. This is the site which is now - 200 years later - just a big hole in the ground. And it was those same enslaved Africans who gave rise to the straw vendors who once occupied that market, by adapting basketware traditions brought from their home cultures.

When Vendue House became a telephone exchange in 1916, the adjacent Market House was the principal trading place for fruit and vegetables, meat, fish and sponges. But over time, the government moved most of the market functions out of the city. Fish, fruit and vegetable vendors ended up mostly at Potter's Cay, and what remained on Bay Street was the tourist-oriented straw and craft market.

The straw industry as we know it today got its start in the 1920s, when the Prince George Wharf was built. A group of enterprising Fox Hill ladies began taking their sisal goods to Rawson Square to sell to ship passengers. They were soon followed by fruit and vegetable vendors who began selling straw work on the Market Range.

Albertha Brown (who died in 1967 at the age of 83) was apparently the first to set up a straw stall more or less where the market site is today. That was in 1936, and over the next few decades the straw trade grew along with tourism.

According to historians Gail Saunders and Michael Craton, "Woman and children throughout trhe islands processed the palmetto straw and sisal fibre and wove the plait to send to Nassau. There, popular items were almost mass produced in workshops over the hill for sale at specialised stalls that outnumbered those selling fruits and vegetables.

Back in the day, Bahamian straw and sisal work was exported to other Caribbean islands. But eventually local demand exceeded supply, and the flow of raw material and finished items was reversed. At first, most imports were from nearby Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Later they came from as far away as the Philippines and China - something which has become a hot-button issue today.

During the political turmoil of the 1950s, the growing number of straw vendors became a cause celebre, competing as they did with the powerful Bay Street merchants for tourist dollars in the heart of the city. There were frequent complaints about the poor conditions in which these enterprising women had to work.

By the next decade the straw market had become a big political football. In 1963 the 62-year-old Market House was condemned and there was talk of a new market on the Adderley property (where the Churchill Building stands today). Although that never panned out, the government did build an open-air arcade for straw vendors in Rawson Square.

When the Progressive Liberal Party came to power in 1967 there were about 700 straw vendors, and their motley collection of stalls had become an attraction, sometimes described as "the gateway to the city". There was renewed talk about building a market specifically for them, which then PLP minister Arthur Foulkes said the previous United Bahamian Party government had been reluctant to do out of envy: "It is our responsibility to correct this mistake," he said at the time.

But again, nothing happened, despite the fact that a parliamentary resolution was passed calling for money to "construct suitable accommodation for the straw vendors." Understandably, there were other priorities for the new government, and the situation remained up in the air until 1974, when the old marketplace burned to the ground.

The government's immediate response was to move the market to Fort Charlotte where there was more space to accommodate them, but the vendors - by now organised as a trade association - protested vehemently and the politicians gave way, providing open-air stalls on the now-cleared Market Range site instead. There followed a six-year hiatus while the government mulled over what to do with this prime waterfront property.

Along with rumours of behind the scenes dealing by political cronies to gain access to the site, those years saw running battles with the vendors who tried to set up sidewalk stalls all along Bay Street. Eventually, it was announced that a new four-storey Market Plaza would be built to house over 500 vendors, as well as the Ministry of Tourism.

For construction to begin, fruit and vegetable vendors were moved inland to Jumbey Village, at Big Pond. But efforts to relocate the straw vendors to the Customs shed on the Prince George Wharf met with fierce resistance: "It's not fit for dogs," one vendor said of the Customs shed, although they eventually complied.

But construction never began, leading the vendors to complain that government had shelved the plans: "In their high and lofty position they have forgotten that we are citizens with the right to participate in any decision-making process," they asserted at the time.

In fact, it was not until May 1980 - with an election approaching - that work finally began on the new $6 million Market Plaza. And vendors were not able to occupy the plaza until January of 1983 - almost a decade after the old market had burned down.

The opening of the new Market Plaza was accompanied by huge controversies over access to the limited number of stalls, as well as heavy flooding whenever it rained. But straw vendor chief Telator Strachan condemned the newspapers for using these problems to attack the PLP government.

Even back in the 1980s there were charges that most of the straw work sold at the new market was imported from foreign producers in Panama, Jamaica and Asia. In 1983 a Ministry of Tourism study found that tourists spent $51 million on straw goods, but 85 per cent was imported.

Fast forward to 2001, when a looneytune peanut seller named Gardiner walked into the straw market and struck a match, putting the vendors and tourism personnel out of work in a single stroke, and almost burning down Bay Street in the process.

The event was termed a ”national disaster”, and officials scrambled to make good. Within months they were envisioning a state-of-the-art complex that would help to transform the downtown waterfront. A design competition was launched with much fanfare, and rebuilding was set to begin in 2003.

By that time the unfortunate arsonist had progressed through our molasses-like court system to begin a 12-year jail term, and the Ministry of Tourism had acquired posh new offices at a cost of more than $4 million.

But even now – six years after the fire – the straw market remains a vacant lot in the heart of the city, just a stone’s throw from the cruise port, with vendors still working beneath a makeshift tent. The new Free National Movement government recently cancelled a $23 million contract (signed by the Christie administration just three months before the May election) because it could not justify the expenditure in the face of other national priorities.

According to the PLP, the contract was "the largest investment ever in any single government building". Meanwhile, FNM officials have also proposed moving the straw market to Fort Charlotte or the Prince George Wharf - proposals which the vendors have predictably trashed.

Several questions arise from this potted history:

Why did it take five years or more for the PLP to rebuild the market - twice in the past three decades?

Is the investment of $23 million in public funds to provide market stalls for 600 vendors justified in the face of other pressing needs - like schools and hospitals?

Is the straw market one of the few native expressions of our culture, or just a collection of small shops?

Should the Bahamian taxpayer subsidise vendors who pay no rent or business licenses and who often subcontract their stalls to illegal immigrants?

Should we let vendors stand on the sidelines vetoing every suggestion and demanding a handout?

Do vendors have any responsibility for their own livelihood?

Should we subsidise the sale of imported souvenirs and fake brand-name goods?

Should we invest huge amounts of money in a market building on Bay Street that cannot accommodate those for whom it was designed?

What are the alternatives?

And finally, why do we keep going around in circles discussing the same issues year after year, decade after decade, with no resolution?

Comments

[anonymous]

we've really got to do something to drive more traffic to your site. Other blogs about far less important or interesting things pull in hundreds of comments on articles that were a waste of time to read.

My crazy thoughts:

Get some white people, both tourists and Bahamians, give them cameras and let them record what actually goes on in the straw market (there are already a few on youtube).

Conduct another survey on how much of the stuff is not bahamian.

Remind the public of the '85% imported' statistics from 1983.

Show them the results of the new survey and the video of what it's like for a tourist (or light skinned bahamian) to actually visit the market.

Then, let the public vote on:
* whether to build a new market
* whether the vendors should pay rent (partially repay the cost of building a new market)
* whether vendors should be required to obtain some sort of license that entitles them to their place in the market
* whether vendors should be allowed to let unqualified, unlicensed, unprofessional, unfriendly, non-Bahamians operate their stalls
* whether Immigration officers should be placed on permanent patrol in and around the market and cruise ship areas.

After all, for many, Bay Street is the only part of the Bahamas they'll see. Do we really want so many vulgar, aggressive, and greedy Haitians, Jamaicans, and others standing in the way between the cruise ships and the Bahamian vendors?

[larry smith]

Well, we certainly need to build a consensus around a rational solution to this ridiculous and never-ending problem.

And if you can promote this site, I thank you.

[dadon589]

This is a good one. Man! This article and the points made need to be brought to the forefront of the bahamain conciousness. These are the questions we should be asking ourselves on this issue and it certainly justifies not going forward with the $23M contract. Sad to see the political elite tried to cash in on the vendors at the publics expense. Too many theives in Nassau.

[Helen Astarita]

I read with great interest your wonderful article acquainting many folks with the history of the straw market.

Since my time in the Bahamas goes back to the very early 60s I can recall both of the previous fires.
It is truly sad that they occurred, but had both of those markets been better maintained by the vendors themselves by not allowing the rats and garbage to accrue, the fires might not have spread as rapidly as they did.

The fact that many of the current vendors are of Haitian decent and that it is rare to find a ‘made in the Bahamas’ product made of native straw in the market rather defeats their cries of help.

I remember well while cruising through these islands in the 60s and 70s seeing many old folks as well as youngsters sitting in the shade in front of their cottages weaving the rolls of plait that would end up on the freight boats to Nassau.

Then the folks here would sew them into the lined bags and decorate them with the coloured raffia.
In fact many of the scraps left from cuttings at Bahama Hand Prints and Androsia were donated to them for the linings.

I for one feel the current government well within its rights to re-examine any plans of spending that exorbitant amount of money for a building when many vendors are probably not even paying their National insurance and hiring foreign workers.

You asked what I think and now you know!!

[A. Nonymous]

* whether vendors should be allowed to let unqualified, unlicensed, unprofessional, unfriendly, non-Bahamians operate their stalls
* whether Immigration officers should be placed on permanent patrol in and around the market and cruise ship areas.

After all, for many, Bay Street is the only part of the Bahamas they'll see. Do we really want so many vulgar, aggressive, and greedy Haitians, Jamaicans, and others standing in the way between the cruise ships and the Bahamian vendors?

really?

have you stop to think that the reason these "vulgar, aggressive, greedy Haitians Jamaicans and others..." have to be that way is so that they can meet the exorbitant rents being charged by the vulgar, aggressive, greedy Bahamians who own the stalls?

Frankly, the market as envisioned should be scrapped. The mythology of all the many prominent Bahamians who got their start there is fine but that does not mean the rest of us should pay for it.

It is a business like any other and it should be subject to the laws and regulations governing commerce.

If they want tax payers to subsidise the building they should pay - licences, national insurance and maintenance fees.

Here is another idea. Simply upgrade the tent - out of vendors' fees. The place has the feel of all such markets world-wide - seedy, dank, hot, cheap, overpriced. It is an experience and that is what the tourists come for, isn't? an experience.

The vendors can't have it both ways. Just install and maintain proper toilet facilities. Insist on licences and national insurance.

The market is fine as it is.

If the government wants to do something with the hole in the ground well let it be part of the ongoing discussion of the "development of downtown Nassau". If history is an indicator, that one has a shelf life well into the 22nd century.