COMPARED to the lively bustle of Kingston's Coronation Market, Alexandria's Charlton Market seemed like a funeral home.
Case in point, two Saturdays ago, the Market had no more than six customers, six higglers and two tired old donkeys that couldn't even muster up the energy to bray.
Many lament the demise of this once vibrant marketplace, which, forty years ago used to be filled with donkeys, vans and higglers from within the parish as well as from outside parishes, like Hanover and Trelawny.
"Boy, this place [has gone] to the dogs. My, my... I didn't know this would happen. There is no market here. You think years ago one couldn't stand inside here comfortably?" asked David Thomas.
"[It would be] jam-packed... hundreds of higglers. People just pushing you here and there," he continued.
He looked around at the few higglers with pity.
"Look, them is here from morning, nobody coming to buy anything."
Then he turned around to the higgler selling the ripe pears.
"Look like you have to give them away. They getting over-ripe," he said.
Mr. Alvin Stewart, who used to sell foodstuff at the market 20 years ago, backed up Thomas' assessment of the market.
"This place was a traffic jam first time. People just poured in like yu see john crow flock dead meat because there were things here to purchase. But a lot of bad things happened."
Stewart explained that some higglers left to set up stalls in the Brown's Town Market because it was closer to them, but others left because the facilities at Charlton were allowed to run-down.
"This place reach[ed] a stage where there was no form of security. Who is going to come here if their goods aren't safe?" he asked quite reasonably.
Ms. Marcia Clarke, a higgler, does not even consider the place a market.
"It is only on Saturday we come here. Is just 20 pounds of fish a carry and I don't even know if these will sell off."
She complained that nothing had been done to attract higglers to the market.
"It's just too bad. No stalls," Marcia said.
