Sucked orange

TIMES INT'L

Satiricus always knew that Guyanese had a way with words. They were so imaginative. In the 1960’s, just like that, they came up with “choke and rob” to describe what Americans mundanely called “muggings”. A “mugging” can be all sorts of things – even connected to the guzzling of Satiricus’ favourite beer. “But “choke-and rob”? No room for ambiguity there,” grinned Satiricus. “Just like with kick-down-the-door-bandits in the 80’s” and “slippery ochro” now.”

Satiricus was mulling over the reaction of the Bourda vendors to Hammer Green’s tough-love edict to break down their stalls. One vendor moaned, “Hammie treating we like sucked orange. He suck we dry and den throw ‘way de skin.”

Satiricus knew exactly what that vendor meant. He liked oranges – especially the ones from Canal. When Satiricus ate oranges, he would cut them in two and then suck all the juice from each half, until there was absolutely no more. Then he would dump the skin in the rubbish bin. Why not? He had no use for orange skin.

But this is where the vendors didn’t understand Hammer Green. Hammer wasn’t Satiricus. He was a man of vision: he was a man who wanted to change Guyana. He wanted to get rid of all the blood suckers on Regent Street and make the poor (vendors) inherit the earth!

He could see beyond the sweet juice of the orange. Sure he had used the vendors to do his dirty work. Sure they had been used as shock troops. They had marched that Syuba lady who didn’t realise Hammer was “El Jefe”, didn’t they?

But that was also for the good of the vendors. Usually, they’d sit on their chairs in front of their stalls – just getting fat and unhealthy. Hammer was doing them a favour by making them march in the sun every now and them.

And so it was with the breaking of their stalls; the vendors didn’t see the big picture. The Bourda vendors were obstructing just a bunch of old papers from the derelict old school. Nobody in there to be obstructed out of business. By forcing the vendors to move and not providing them with any alternative space, they would have to move to the more upscale locales in front of the new malls and so on.

Where they could help make the lives of those uppity money-grubbing blood suckers hell.

Even the skin of sucked oranges can be useful: they can make orange peel.

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