THE WORLD-FAMOUS BAHAMAS STRAW MARKET

‘The Straw Vendor and The Wood Carver’ This is their story.

By Shavaughn Moss

Photographs Courtesy Of Shavaughn Moss and L. Roscoe Dames II

Eneas hates that hardworking straw vendors were looked down upon.

Rolle, on the other hand, after deciding to learn to carve, not tooting his own horn, said he learnt to be one of the best. He was rewarded for his carving skills with the opportunity to travel with the Ministry of Tourism to represent The Bahamas to showcase his carving talents.

Rolle has visited eighteen of the Continental United States through the years with all his expenses paid; sometimes, up to three states per year. And he even came home with pocket change of up to $2,000.00 after selling his carvings at the end of shows.

In fact, he found carving so lucrative over the years that he gave up on completing his formal education to carve full time.

“At the age of 14, my mother was a waitress, my father worked at [a telecommunications company], and I made more money than both of them.”

He said at the end of his tenth-grade year, with two years left to complete his high school education, he was making so much money, he could not overlook it.

“School was ready to close for the summer. I told the teacher to take a picture of me because that was the last, she was going to see of me – ‘cause I ain’t coming back. I stopped and went into woodcarving fulltime.”

Eneas started out in Rawson Square, which she said was referred to in those days as “The Garden.” With no shelter to be had, vendors set up their wares to sell on cardboard laid out on the ground.

“The rain wet you and the sun dry you,” she recalled.

“It was a road where people could walk and the chain with the little grass, so you made that your stall.”

The straw industry as it is known is said to have begun in the 1920s by a group of industrious women from Fox Hill on the eastern end of the island of New Providence, who sold their wares in the city of Nassau at Rawson Square.

According to Bahamian history, Penelope Phenney, wife of the country’s 15th colonial governor, George Phenney, created a market for Bahamian straw products. But the commercial straw industry waned after the Phenneys returned to England before it was revived in the 1860s.

In the 1920s, vendors began selling their creations to cruise ship guests. Edward, the Duke of Windsor, and his wife Wallis Simpson, it is recorded, realized straw work was a much-needed revenue earner for Bahamians. And in

1943, the duke, the then-royal governor of The Bahamas, had sheds and stalls built for vendors in Rawson Square.

Over the decades, two major fires threatened the livelihood of market vendors. The makeshift market was destroyed by fire in 1974. Vendors celebrated when the new Straw Market opened on June 3, 1983; that was eventually destroyed by fire on September 4, 2001, forcing vendors to relocate to the Prince George Wharf to sell their wares.

The Straw Market edifice as it is today reopened on December 16, 2011.

It is there that Eneas and Rolle proudly continue to work for themselves.

“I was able to raise all of my children – all four – from the money I made in the Straw Market,” Eneas proudly stated.

But there was also a time when she succumbed to the weight of the disdain of others and took no pride in working in the Straw Market, which she said was during her formative high school years. She did everything she could to ensure that her school friends never saw her in the facility.

“I used to be ashamed to come to the market. When my friends saw me, I used to run to the Stop ‘n’ Shop (a since closed department store), so they did not see me. Even today if you listen to people … what they say…” she said.

Now older and wiser, she realizes she had nothing to be ashamed of.

“We work for ourselves. We were self-employed – and I choose to work for myself, because I did not want to work for anybody,” she said.

“I am proud to be a Bahamian working in the Straw Market, helping people … being a spokesperson for the people and not just letting people take advantage of the vendors. I go and stand up for them and say we work for ourselves; we do not need to take anything; you want to push anything down our throats.”

Eneas said people just have to take the time to look around the Straw Market to see the good that has come from the hardworking people who take their craft seriously and who have been able to give their children private school educations and university degrees from the money made there.

“We are a proud set of people. Proud to be entrepreneurs, working for ourselves,” she said.

Rolle said he has absolutely no regrets, other than not having learnt woodcarving earlier than he did.

“I will be honest – I am glad I got into woodcarving because I do not have to put up with nonsense from nobody. I put in my own hours, do not have to bring in any sick slip, I pick and go when I want to and how I want to,” he said.

They both say vendors and carvers are people who work hard and hustle to accomplish the Bahamian dream of shelter for their families in the form of a home and education.

She said they also wanted a nice car, but before the vehicle, a home and education were important.

At 68 years old, Eneas said the Straw Market is a viable avenue for Bahamians to make good money and support themselves. She cautions, though, that people wanting to get into the industry should seek to do so for the right reasons – wanting to work for themselves, to help better themselves to provide for their family.

Rolle laments that woodcarving is a dying trade. He has three sons, none of whom want to learn woodcarving. He taught his brother whom he said quit to join law enforcement.

“They say it’s too hard.”

Fifty years of woodcarving later, Rolle knows he is good at what he does, but said a bright spot for him is that there is a fellow carver who started carving two decades after he did, and who he regards as one of the best, because he draws well. He would love to see the art form taught in schools. UA