Making ends meet after the fire

His little store is filled with drums, African garments and accessories, Rastafari craft and souvenirs, incense sticks and perfume oils.

Brother Resistance is one of the few former People’s Mall tenants who found accommodation in other shopping buildings in the city.

But the father of three of East Dry River, told Newsday, “Sales are a lot slower here. People don’t know I’m here. My business was a landmark at the People’s Mall. I had built up a nice clientele with local and international customers, but it’s difficult to recapture that here. I’ve lost a lot of sales. My store had given me a sense of independence and I didn’t want to lost that.”

But Brother Resistance, too, was confident that they would get their new mall soon, and said some of the queries concerning the lease had to do with financing and the type of structure that was to be constructed at the site.

“We have been working in collaboration with Government and I am confident that work on the project would start soon,” he said.

Karega Mandela, another Rapso artiste and longstanding tenant of the People’s Mall, was not so optimistic, though. Sitting inside his craft and clothing booth on the perimeter of the burnt out site, which had no customers, he said, frankly, “If it was rich people, the new mall would have finished already. But we are poor people and they don’t really care about us. They are not giving this project any kind of priority.” Mandela further disclosed that displaced vendors were not really “compensated” for their losses in the fire.

“They gave us a loan of $50,000. We have to pay it back. That is not compensation.” Mandela said everybody couldn’t be accommodated on the perimeter of the burnt out site, and many are eking out an existence elsewhere.