Vendor Dwayne Walker makes change for a customer at the Spanish Town market in St Catherine. - Photo by Sonia Mitchell

"Bag juice, bag juice! Bag juice man, sell mi a bag juice," a short, plump woman shouted out to him.

"Yes mi hear yu," the man replied as he approached her. She handed him a $100 bill to purchase a $15 bag of sorrel drink.

The man handled the money carefully as he made change.

Dwayne Walker appears to enjoy what he does for a living, but he still struggles with memories.

He is not completely at peace with that fateful day in 1986 which led to him becoming blind. And even though there is a smile on his face, the pain in his voice as he speaks is clear.

Despite this, Walker does not let his situation get him down, nor the way some people in society treat him.

Twenty-two-year-old Walker has been selling since 2005. For six months before that he had tried to learn how to make wicker chairs but, after realising he couldn't hone the skills necessary, he decided to do something else to earn a living so he wouldn't have to beg. He would travel alone to buy and sell clothes baskets in front of Azan's and Lerner Shop in downtown Kingston.

Difficult business

Business proved difficult as the area was overcrowded and too fast- paced for him to move about.

Walker now sells at the Spanish Town market in St Catherine, which he says is safer for him.

"It is just 15 minutes walking distance from where I live, to come to the market, and some of these people are my neighbours," Walker told The Gleaner. He added that, although he knew people could try to take advantage of him, he has known the people around him for some time and they would not violate his friendship with them.

Walker said he sells from Monday to Saturday and comes out sometimes from 9 in the morning or 12 noon. On a good day he can make a profit of $600.

"Business is good for me, and this is the best business I ever have done in my life," he remarked. "One time I made $20,000 in a short space of time."

In 1986, Walker's family took him to the Spanish Town Hospital when, at just six months old, he had diarrhoea and had to be admitted.

He said that when his family members came to visit him, they did not recognise him because of his bandages and the way that his eyes were turning white. He later developed complications and became blind.

He claimed that when the family tried to find out what went wrong, no hospital personnel could provide any answer.

In 1994, hope came his way when the Lions Club in the United States (US) sponsored his trip to get corrective surgery when he was eight.

Second sponsorship

Walker said it was helping him a little and, in 1998, he received a second sponsorship to go to New York. However, because it was during the Christmas holiday, surgery was not done until March 1999, when he was 13 years old.

The doctors proposed that he stay longer, so that treatment could help him further, but his aunt sent him back alone to Jamaica.

"Since we went the second time, she has been in the US since 1998, and I have not heard from her again ... Because of her, I have to go around using a cane today," he said sadly.

Walker went to the Salvation Army School for the Blind on Mannings Hill Road for a few years but left at the age of 15 because he could not cope with the rigid rules of the school.

Now, claiming to have learnt the hard way through his experiences in life, he says he is a better person.

"I want to be at a place where I can get work and be able to go to school to learn Braille, as I don't remember much, and to become a disc jockey on the radio since I have a little experience in it," he told The Gleaner.