Carnival!!!

Well honestly... we were kind of let down by Carnival.....

Carnival is a festival that happens once a year and is basically a week-long party/cultural celebration. Every island has their own Carnival and they are at different times throughout the year. Kids have off from school almost the whole week, businesses close or just have wierd hours and traffic is insane! Carnival village was set up just down the hill from our house so we didn't have to go anywhere and we heard EVERYTHING that went on.


It kicked into gear Monday night when the village opened up. We went down a couple of nights, listened to some steel pan, ate some local food, which is really good (although we ran into a lady from church who wanted to share her snails or something or other with us - i braved it - barely!) They have about 4 rides that include a slide, tilt-a-whirl, merry-go-round and this kiddie motorcycle ride. They had a bunch of Carnival games which were SUPER expensive and the prizes were NOT worth it! They also had a bunch of stands selling wierd dollar store type toys. Each night they would have live music from about 7pm to around 2am (sometimes we had to close the hurricane shutters just to sleep).

Wednesday night the music was going all night long because Jouvert begins around 4am and goes until 10am. It's basically a parade through the streets where people just dance behind a truck. Needless to say we had to work Thursday morning so we missed it.


Luckily we had Friday and Saturday off because those are the days of the Children's and Adults parade. Friday morning we walked down to the main square at about 9:45 to catch the Children's parade which started at 10. This was the first of many discoveries that redefined what the concept of a "Parade" is. The "parade" got going about 10:45 (island time). And it wasn't a parade in that people march on through.... they stop before each "act" enters the square and prep for like 10 min. before the group comes through... The groups were basically just ten million versions of kings/queens/princes/princesses riding through on convertibles, girls twirling batons and about three steel pan bands.

The music never stopped thumping... when the parade ended the village bands began... we went out to dinner that night, just to go to the other side of the island to get a break and some quiet solidtude! Then saturday was the adult parade.

This was also supposed to start at 10am, but began more like 12! It went for 7 HOURS!!!! it was nuts... we watched part of it on TV cuz it was a lot of the same stuff as the day before, just bigger people. The commentators were so bad... they had nothing to say except "We're having such a wonderful time down here!" (cut to a shot of miserable people crowded under tents and umbrellas fanning themselves). I can't get over the fact that people hang out on this parade route for over 7 hours! They only got excited when the sun was setting and a truck came through with (superman, spider man and batman) standing on top of it along with "Jam Band" -the most popular Quelbe band down here singing their hit song "Spiderman". Take the words above in parentheses, add the word like in front of each one and you know all the words to the song. They played this song all day long - because everyone loves to listen to the same song for 7 hours straight, right?


Anyway, there was some cool costumes once they hit hour four and the best part was the Mocko Jumbies. I would have expected the commentators to add a little historty about each group as they came by, but the limit to their vocabulary was, "Those costumes are fabulous!"

So now that you have experienced Carnival with us, i would encourage you to head to Rio deJanero (sp? i'll figure it out later, i'm in a hurry) if you are still interested in seeing/learning more. Apparently that's where this stuff all began... But in all fairness, i'm sure we would have enjoyed Carnival much more if we were A: Big partiers who wanted to take advantage of all the Rum stands that were every other booth, or if we were West Indian and this was our culture.

until next time.... or we see you on the 18th/21st/72nd