Jump Up, Jump Up

CARNIVAL! So sorry it has been so long...evidently I can exceed my internet usage at home and I did, so now I am paying for every use unless I have time to go to Rituals (their Starbucks). The moral of the story is that I haven't been online too much lately. But I am sitting here a very crowded Rituals ready to share the Carnival experience with you!

So first on Saturday, I went to Kiddie Carnival, which is a huge parade of kid in costumes dancing around. Some of the costumes were really elaborate and I can't believe that the kids managed to walk in them, especially with how hot it was. I think the parents were the real troopers though, many had a cooler with water and snacks, were carrying half of their kid's costume, pushing the stroller and trying to get the kids to dance. Woo, lots of work! Here are some of the cute ones!






Then on Sunday night I went to another fete, this one had a much younger crowd, but it felt a bit like a junior high dance. Everyone came in groups and set up camp around the perimeter of the space and swayed back and forth. The middle was void of dancers and you could tell that everyone wanted to dance, they were just too timid to get in the middle and do it. We had fun dancing around our table and tried to venture out into the abyss as much as we could!

I stayed with Christian's parents on Sunday and Monday night...this was a much more traditional Trini house than my neighborhood. The outside walls didn't meet the ceiling and there were open brick sections for air to pass through. The roof was corrugated iron and relatively flat. They said they had lived there for 30 years, and they had a yard full of dogs which they got after two break-ins.

OK, onto Carnival Monday and Tuesday. Monday is the more casual day for costumes and a not quite as populated, but the two days are similar. Pretty much take a college dancing bar, put it in the streets on a really hot day and take away a bunch of clothes. The biggest bands (that's what each parade group is called, they don't play instruments though!) were pretty much girls in bikinis with fancy head pieces. Some of the smaller bands actually had traditional Carnival costumes like from Ye Old Yard. A picture is worth 1000 words, so I'll tell you the rest that way...


A good example of the costumes


The big bands were all inclusive...they had food and drink trucks, an ambulance, and most importantly portable bathrooms!


The best (and sometimes worst) thing was that age, gender, race, rationality and size didn't matter. Everyone was here to have a good time and that was all that mattered! It was great except when there was an older, heavier women really shakin it!


Each section had themes, which usually had a fancy themed costume at the front


This won King of the Bands, which is the big award for the best costume. There is a Queen of the Bands and a Jr. King and Queen too. This is just the front of it, it goes pretty far back!


This was a more traditional costume...how hot would that be in 85 degree heat!





I'd like to come back some year and play in a band...but don't worry dad, I will wear something that covers me up!!
I'll put more pictures on facebook if you want to see more!

Ye Old Yard

Ye Old Yard is a production put on by the University's theater/arts department and shows the traditional charcters of Carnvial. Many of them come from Trinidad folklore traditions. Here are some pictures, and I'm sure these charcters will come up next weekend during the big Carnival celebrations!

Fire Person


Sailor

Jab Molassie (black devil)

Blue Devil - the devils were really cool, they danced around and harassed people for tips and blew fire and all sorts of things! The kids either loved it or cried!

Moko Jumbie - men on stilts

Dame Lorraine - there were many of these characters, each with either a big stomach or big butt, and they were originally making fun of their slave masters

Tunapuna Shopping Trip

This afternoon I went on a little shopping trip to Tunapuna. I pass Tunapuna on my way to tutoring and I've always wanted to stop and check it out...I took some pictures so you can shop along with me!


This car is on my walk down the hill, on a bad day, it really cheers me up!


This is a Maxi Taxi, what I ride pretty much everywhere. The red band shows which route it runs, I have yet to venture outside of red!


This is a little glimpse of the street view. It is lined with shops and store fronts.


A guy was sitting outside a shop with a table set up of homemade jewelry. Thing were made of bamboo, copper, bone, wood, all kinds of things. I bought a pair of earrings the are made of butterfly wings, they are cool (and convert to $2.50, nice)


This is what some of the stores looked like...just packed with stuff on top of stuff! Most of them were regular stores, but the ones like this were overwhelming!


The Tunapuna market. This guy laughed at me after I took this! It was a big farmer's market, some of the food I had seen before, some I hadn't. But the worst were the dried fish skins, the smell was awful by those tables!


Some peppers, I just think they are really cool, I've never really seen peppers like these!


It is hard to see, but this little guy was on a tree outside my door when I got home. He wasn't very photogenic.

Hope you enjoyed the trip!

Calypso Tents

So I got the chance to go to a Calypso Tent last night, they are popular around Carnival and there is a big Calypso competition throughout the Carnival weeks. Mostly, it is social commentary put to music...some were really funny and some were serious, but all had a good beat! The singer will come out and perform and then if the audience likes them, they get called back on stage for another verse (which the best improvise). If you know me, you know that I'm not the best with lyrics in the first place, then with the accent and the lack of background knowledge, I had trouble following along...luckily Susan and Christian helped explain everything!!
It was a fun night and I have a video to give you a little flavor of it!




This one is a Steel Pan solo

There is nothing quite like looking stupid

While there have been many times when I felt out of place or unsure of what was going on here in the last two weeks, today was one of the first times I really felt stupid! It all began when I changed my lunch plans...I was going to head home and make a sandwich before going back out for my afternoon of work. But as I left my morning meetings, I thought, heck, why don’t I just get lunch here and take it with me. Seemed pretty clever, I would avoid the extra travel home and I don’t have much to eat there anyway. So I headed to the cafeteria and looked around at my options.

As I look at the menu, there are a few things I have never heard of and then some items I am interested in but can’t point out among the options I see before me. So I decide that I should go for it, I’ll try something new. Roti is to Trinidad what ball park franks are to baseball parks. And while I have heard of this wondrous Roti, I have yet to see or experience it...might as well go for it now huh? They pack up my food in a couple containers, put it in a bag for me and off I go.

As I am about to exit the building, I notice that the water I purchased, also in the bag with the food, had green stuff all over the bottom of it. Upon closer examination, I notice that everything in the bag is now covered with a light green sauce. Oh crap. I try to hold the container more upright and hurry to a little Starbucks-esc cafe right near the exit. I search frantically for napkins. I get many stares. I take out each item from the bag, finally revealing the container of the green sauce, spilling generously over the side. Great. My lunch is covered in sauce, the bag is filled with it and I look ridiculous. What to do but to just sit down and eat there.

So I wipe everything off and sit down in this very warm, very small like cafe with a line of people out the door to buy coffee/smoothies. It is then that I realize, I have no idea how to eat this Roti, this national treasure, and there are a lot of people about to take notice. Container one had some veggies in it, I got that one down, no problem. Container two, the source of the green sauce, has chicken (of course on the bone!), some dumpling type of things and is covered in the sauce, which would have been quite delicious if I wasn’t so angry at it! Container three was the stumper...at first I thought it was a roll, but when I opened it I found that it was a mass of thin pieces of just-cooked-enough dough. Ok. What do I do with that? Option one was to eat is straight, that didn’t seem right. Maybe I was to scoop the chicken, which I non-gracefully extracted from the bones, onto it like a spoon? Or do I just soak it in the sauce? More stares ensure, this time with some dirty looks. So I did what anyone who looks really stupid would do, I kept my head down, pretending no one could see me and I ate really fast, using all three dough eating options at different times so that at least 1/3 of the time I didn’t look too ridiculous.

It was about this time that I also noticed that my (really, super cute) white jacket now has little green specks on the front...so I now have to carry my humiliation around with me the rest of the day. But wait, there is one more little gem of stupidity. I didn’t finish the veggies, so I wiped off the container the best I could, dodged in and out of the line of waiting patrons to get a small paper bag to put the container in, tossed this in my purse and off I went. In the taxi on the way to work, not 3 minutes later, the paper bag had broken and the greasy, gross container was sitting all over my papers. I then had to frantically rearrange my bag in the taxi, which held 4-5 other people, making “ah, dang, ah, no” noises the whole time. So all-in-all this may not seem like a big deal, may not seem really all that stupid, but tell that to the stares I got!