Walking through the teeming streets of the city was an experience in itself. Fort-de-France with its 66,000 residents is crowded between two rivers gallantly named Rivière Madame and Rivière Monsieur. To Biff, it seemed as if every resident of the town swarmed in the narrow street down which the three walked that morning.
“Look at that!” Biff said in amazement.
A small native woman walked briskly among the crowd. A sixty-pound basket of fruit and vegetables was balanced on her head.
“Biff, these people are small, but they’re powerful. And they have a magnificent sense of balance,” Uncle Charlie said.
In the basket which the woman wore like a headpiece were bright red tomatoes, a green pebble-skinned breadfruit, and some fat pineapples. Under one arm she carried a full stalk of bananas.
The capital of Martinique was a blaze of color, from the women’s costumes to the buildings and the flowers growing riotously in every garden and patio. Beautiful bougainvillea, brilliantly colored from rich, deep purple and red to pale lavender and violet, spilled over balconies like cascading waterfalls.
Uncle Charlie led Biff and Crunch to a small hardware store. There was hardly an inch of open space in the store. A heavy bathtub hung over the entrance. Garden hose, bicycles, pots, pans, fishing and skin-diving equipment crowded shelves and hung from rafters.
“How can anyone find anything in here?” Biff asked.
“A mystery to me, too, Biff,” Uncle Charlie laughed. “But the clerks can put their hands on any item you ask for in a second. They’re really out to serve you.”
Biff was given an example of this as his uncle made his purchases. In no time at all, Biff and Crunch were laden with marking buoys, two Scubas—self-contained, underwater-breathing apparatus—and Uncle Charlie brought up the rear with a gay red-and-white nylon tent.