The Children of Sisyphus
Stabroek News
February 2, 2007
No West Indian novel has chronicled the tribulations of the poor and the downtrodden more poignantly than the Jamaican writer Orlando Patterson's The Children of Sisyphus. His account of the squalor of the poorest of the poor in urban Jamaica paints a hauntingly disturbing picture of deprivation and all of its ugly derivatives.
The conditions in which the vendors occupying the Water Street arcade must eke out a living from day to day reflect a pocket of degradation that has become altogether unacceptable in our capital. It appears that they have now given up all hope of any change in their circumstances and have resigned themselves to the life of gloom, depression and underachievement which the squalor of the arcade symbolizes.
We have had numerous promises from the City Council to address the problems of the arcade - promises that have ranged from commitments to undertake basic upgrading initiatives to the envisaged creation of an elaborate multi-storey facility which, of course, the current occupants of the arcade would then not be in position to afford to occupy.
All of the promises have come to nought and when Stabroek Business visited the vendors last week we found a less than friendly "community," a community so frustrated and depressed that many of them refused even to answer our questions. They have, it appears, come to believe, that there is no place in this city of ours for "the small hustler." the marginal businessman who is prepared to work hard, day in day out, in order to make what amounts to no more than a subsistence living rather than to pursue a life of crime and mendicancy.
The vast majority of the occupants of the arcade are women, young single parents whose presence in Water Street is indicative of their determination to support their children and, hopefully, to lay a better foundation for them. We saw the worry etched on their faces.
If their hopes may have risen during last year when talk of a "re-make" of the city raised hopes that the arcade may have finally gotten some attention their hopes have now been dashed by a recognition that no such miracle is about to occur. And frankly, life has become too hard and their circumstances too dire to afford them the luxury of "chasing dreams." They know when they are beaten.
And if you happen by the Water Street arcade any time soon you will see the vendors - the Children of Sisyphus - pressing on in their squalor, some breaking the law to shuttle their goods from their arcade stalls to more suitable vantage points, making "deals," they say, with the City Police without which they are hard-pressed to make a living.