Once the site of a slave auction, this is Stabroek Market (Georgetown, Guyana). Despite all the dire warnings, I felt I had to go inside. I can still see myself slinking along: a slightly comical figure, conspicuously white and furtive. I was convinced that, any moment, robbers would put a chain around my neck and then work me over like some sort of human ATM. But they didn’t.
Once the site of a slave auction, this is Stabroek Market (Georgetown, Guyana). Despite all the dire warnings, I felt I had to go inside. I can still see myself slinking along: a slightly comical figure, conspicuously white and furtive. I was convinced that, any moment, robbers would put a chain around my neck and then work me over like some sort of human ATM. But they didn’t. Perhaps, in the hot, meaty darkness, they were far too astonished by the sight of anyone so colourless. ‘Hey, whitey!’ people exclaimed, ‘Whiiiiiite boy!’ Only one person assaulted me. She was a wonderful character, an enormous Afro-Guyanese, who gave me a half-hearted slap across the backside. ‘Why you all so, man?’ she bellowed, ‘Come give Mumma a big kiss!’
Everyone roared, and I pinked, and wriggled off into the crowd. Then, as my anxiety dissipated, an African market took shape. Outside, in the mud, were the dwarfs and scavengers, but inside business was booming. I came across wild honey, salted shark, crab oil, and strips of meat like ancient bark. Then there were the bush medicine stalls. Each one was piled with old sauce bottles, re-filled with potions and unguents, marked ‘Belly’, ‘Head pain’, ‘Cold’ or ‘Man Builder Tonic.’ Although this last tonic sounded intriguing, it was just a jar of chillies pickled in fish-scales and bush rum. Whether this does anything for the Townies' manliness, I don’t know, but I had a feeling that it wouldn’t do much for mine.
