Trini Carnival

Every year in my beautiful island of Trinidad and Tobago we celebrate Carnival. Though the actual event is only two days, "the best Monday and Tuesday of the year" as some would say, Carnival is much more than that. It really starts about a week before the main event or even a year before the main event if we really get down into the nitty gritty.

A year before the main event, between July and August there are several band launches. Band launches are basically parties that different carnival bands host, for example Tribe or Fantasy, where they show off the costumes that are available for the upcoming Carnival. But fast forward from all that to the week before Carnival, in most parts of the world, from what I gather, Christmas is the happiest time of the year, everyone's happy and love is in the air, that is Trinidad during Carnival season1. So in the week before Carnival masqueraders collect their costumes, there are lots of fêtes2 , there's a fête every night up until Carnival Monday, there's a steel pan competition called Panorama, there's "Kiddies Carnival", King and Queen competition and probably a lot of other exciting things that I'm forgetting at the moment.

Carnival Monday starts with j'ouvert3 at about 1/2:00 am and ends anywhere between 6-8 am. After j'ouvert "mas" starts,  mas traditionally would have been costumes like "Fancy Sailors", "Dame Lorraine", "Moko Jumbie" and much more but these days carnival has become "bikinis and beads." On Monday people usually wear a dressed down version of their costumes and then on Tuesday they wear the full thing which includes arm bands, legs bands, head pieces and lots of feathers. On Tuesday the bands are judged, and a winner is declared on Wednesday. When bands go to the various judging points their masqueraders must get into their sections, a section consists of people who are playing in the same costume.

This Carnival I mostly did work but I did manage to squeeze some fun in. On Carnival Saturday I tie-dyed some shirts and went to panorama, on Carnival Sunday my family hosted a lime4, on Carnival Monday I went to Las Cuevas (the beach) and practiced my surfing and on Tuesday I went ON THE ROAD!!

Sorry I didn't take any pics on the road except for the one above, the costume above is not the typical Carnival costume but I thought it was beautiful.


1 Carnival Season begins after New Years and ends at 12:00am Ash Wednesday.
2 Fête (french) - party.
3 J'ouvert (french origin, pronounced ju-vay) is like a street party with oil, mud and paint, traditionally j'ouvert has little satirical skits which highlight different news worthy events in the country for example politics.
4 Lime - can be used to mean a gathering or to hang out.

Monday Wear

In recent years I've noticed "Monday wear" becoming a popular thing in Trinidad Carnival. Monday wear is a separate costume altogether which is not as pretty or bedazzled (for lack of a better word) as a carnival costume. Monday wear as far as I've heard can range in the hundreds to a thousand, I think might have been the highest price that I've heard so far for a Monday costume, but I cannot say I've done any research on this. For those reading who are not familiar with carnival before Monday Wear was a thing people used to wear a dressed down version of their carnival costume, that is, just the "bikini and beads" no head piece, arm bands, leg bands etc.

I don't agree with the Monday Wear trend and recently posted a status saying:
"What is this thing about paying for a costume and "Monday Wear" about? Whatever happened to wearing a dressed down version of your costume on Monday and then the full thing on Tuesday? Especially since costumes are already so expensive, all that money for one day now?"

Again, for those reading that aren't familiar with Carnival, a female costume in a large band costs TTD3000+, I'm sure its really TTD4000+ but just to be fair/ safe I'll say TTD3000+.

Support Local!

Welcome to my first blog post! How exciting is this huh?! I've been thinking of starting a blog for some time now and decided today was the day! So this blog is piggy-backing off of my facebook page/ posts. So recently I've been stressing the importance of supporting local, especially since the price of oil is on a steady decline and Trinidad and Tobago (the island I'm from) relies very heavily on oil. Then to my complete horror and dismay Prestige Holdings made an announcement this week stating that they would be opening a Starbucks franchise on my beautiful island to which I posted the following status:

"What happened to supporting local? Subway, KFC, Wendy's, DQ, Denny's and now Starbucks... Come on guys, let's stop trying to be a mini-America and be Trinidad and Tobago. 

I like Wendy's and KFC as well eh and I LOVE DQ but come nah man, there's such a thing as too much. We're putting our local food industry out of business man, I don't know if its just me but I find it's harder to get some good creole food than it is to get something from one of these imported franchises. #supportlocal #disappointed #I4TT" I ended my rant on facebook there but I had so much more to say and so many more franchises to list (fear not, I won't list them). 

Recently some friends and I made a trip from Port of Spain to Grand Riviere (close to Toco I've attached a map to give an idea of the expedition). I've made this trip more times than I can count with my family and when I was younger we would stop for home-made ice-cream on the way back home, so when one of my friends suggested we stop for ice-cream on the way back to Port of Spain I got really excited. We stopped at a little parlour and I placed my order with the middle-aged woman behind the counter and to my dismay when I received the ice-cream it was Flavorite (a local brand of ice-cream). While it's good that it was a local brand as opposed to a foreign brand it highlighted to me how major companies are putting little shops out of business. Whereas before it was easy to stop and get home-made ice-cream it is no longer economical for the small businesses to produce its own specially product due to competition from large companies. While in this case the money is still staying in T&T (though getting one family or a few families richer and richer) a good percentage of money that foreign franchises make goes abroad i.e. OUT OF TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO!! Franchises like Starbucks cannot and will not help our local economy! We already have a booming coffee shop (Rituals) so why  import a coffee shop?? Why import any brand for that matter?

I believe that we can have our own franchises that are just as good as any foreign franchise if we work at it. Let's start being a nation that cares about its economic future and thinks ahead instead of two steps in front of us (which is Starbucks). The attraction in these chains is the "nice food" we see on tv (the root of the problem) but we can produce wonderful consumables. The franchises we are bringing in hurt the ladies in the parlours the most, it hurts the small man, the person that lives day to day and it ultimately hurts us ALL. 

About Me

So I've been thinking of starting a blog for some time now and decided today was the day! I'm somewhat excited to embark on this new adventure, hopefully I stick to it. My blog is just gonna be a hodge podge of things, mostly my everyday life. I really enjoy politics/news so I tend to rant on those topics a lot which inspired this blog. I hope you enjoy and please comment, discussions are welcomed!