The first weekend we were in San Vincento, Rosa and I went for a walk during our down time. We went to the square of town. It was a Sunday so nothing was open, and hardly any food carts were even there. We were waiting for the lady who sells tickets to climb up the clock tower to come back from her break when this man came up to us. He wanted to sell us hammocks. Rosa asked him simply “how much do they cost?”: before we knew it he had the hammocks off of his back and was opening them up to show us how nice they were. In my head I was thinking “Dude, lay off, we just wanted to know how much they were.” Then I began to remember all the people in Grenada who would walk in the streets with baskets of cigarettes, gum, candies, and they would come up to you while you were eating trying to sell you things. I just kept thinking “oh how they frustrate me”.
Then like a ton of bricks it hit me: this is the only way these people make money. All the money they have to eat and pay for their home is what they make that day. If the only way I could eat was to sell items out of a basket, I would probably be a little pushy too. Suddenly I felt my heart breaking. How rejected and unloved some of these street vendors must feel. Walking around all day trying to sell their items, only to be told time and time again “no, I don’t want any”, or “get out of here’, or being mocked and made fun of by those around them. How that must hurt; it’s hard enough to hear “no”a few times a day, let alone 20 or 30 times. It just makes my heart ache to think of the effect it has on those people. Some of them are adults and some of them are children.
In many of these countries there are no new businesses opening up. There also aren’t many bigger companies around. Most businesses are family owned, small, and not hiring. This leaves a many people without job opportunities; for many of them there really is no other option. What really breaks my heart is when the children are selling things on the streets because they didn’t ask for that life; they don’t get a choice.
So there I sat asking myself, “what can I do?”. I wouldn’t be a good steward of my money if I buy something from every vendor; especially because I don’t need a hammock, or smokes, or that much gum. Especially in the countries that we are in, there are soo many people trying to sell things on the streets. It’s a problem/situation that is so much bigger than just me, or even my entire squad. But I still can’t help but wonder “what could be done?”.
