Usually you can count on being regularly approached to buy everything from imitation designer bags and watches to bright towels and dresses to lethal looking toys. There is also a brisk trade in massages and temporary stick on tattoos.
But not this year. There are fewer of them and they are less persistent. Now yesterday I touched on these beach traders and said that the economics behind the business interested me.
Occasionally we have got into conversation with one of the traders, but always there comes a point where you know your questions will meet with a polite but studied stone wall. I suppose the recession has something to do with it. There is less money about so fewer tourists on the beach and as a result fewer traders or it might reflect that we are not yet in the high season.
Either way they will have to work as hard as they always do. And as ever I wonder at how the thing works. Do these traders work for some middle men who buy in bulk, and distribute to the traders? Or more likely do these men and women work for themselves? I wonder also at the profit margins; because once you begin to negotiate the price can fall dramatically. But then there is the sticking point beyond which they will not go, and that you realize id the point below which they cannot scrape a living.
And that is what it’s about. They work long hours, crisscrossing the beach, visiting and revisiting the same spots... In the heat of the midday sun you see them resting in the local park or sleeping under whatever shade they can find. Later they will be out again walking up and down trying to make just one more sale. The Italians are polite and treat this intrusion on their holiday with a mixture of vague interest or firm but pleasant rejection.
The geography of the trade also interests me. Here are tall and often stately Africans from the interior, men and women from the Sub Continent and south East Asia. And there is something of a demarcation in what is traded. The women from south east Asia and they are women concentrate on offering massages and temporary tattoos, the Africans mostly sell towels, beach clothes and occasionally watches CDs and bangles, while those from the Sub Continent have huge trays or boards full of watches and jewellery. This year there also young boys mostly Italian who also ply the beaches.
Nor is their day over when night falls, for then they spread out on the broad pavements beside the beach and wait for the long processions of promenaders to pass. Their merchandise is spread out on while sheets and colourful blankets, and they are on the whole less pushy. Perhaps they sense that their buyers will come to them and so less effort needs to be expended, or just more likely they are tired. After all, I am and all I have done is sit on the sand, and walk the streets of Alghero in the evenings.
Some stoically sit and allow their wares to do the business others are more proactive, and one with a slight smile but overwhelming confidence that exuded trust offered his potential customer a five year guarantee. Now for a street trader selling imitation designer bags that had to be a first. It is a hard life and the season is not that long and so you wonder what they will do when it comes to an end, but that like so many of the questions I want to ask remains unanswered.
Pictures from the collection of Andrew Simpson
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