Imagine, for a moment, that you are at a party with your friends. Okay, now imagine that there are also 50,000 other people at this party. Obviously, your house isn't going to be big enough, there aren't enough secret rooms and pantry-hallways to hold everyone (Graysen Pack).. So where do you have this ginormous party? The streets, duh. Continue to imagine the scale of this party, this isn't like some sorority party where you show up late, dance to a few songs, and then leave early to take the party somewhere else. No sir, this particular party is five days long. Five days that an entire nation has been waiting 360 days for. The excitement in the air building up to this weekend, it's electric, it's almost like they pumped cocaine into the air on the island, not that I would know what cocaine is like. But the excitement doesn't just stop once the party begins, it accelerates with each new day. Blame it on the alcohol, blame it on the loud speakers every 40 yards for miles, blame it on the moonlight, blame it on the upbeat music of the Caribbean, but you are about to have the time of your life, your body won't enough know what hit it. This is Carnival. And, unfortunately, you won't ever be able to grasp the enormity of this celebration unless you experience it for yourself (so book a plane ticket now!).
Allow me to start from the beginning. Last Friday was the first night of Carnival. So, to prepare, Katie and I ventured into town during the day to grab lunch and pick up whatever we needed for the weekend. I stopped by the hospital to see my little neighbor because the night before I was told she was put in the hospital due to her Sickle Cell. She was super bored, I don't blame her. There was no one in the beds next to her, in hindsight that's probably a good thing, but she was lonely, and hot. The hospital doesn't use AC so the place was sweltering. I was dripping just standing there. I kept her company as best I could as she isn't that talkative and she was still in a bit of pain. I promised I would bring a cheese and sausage pizza, her favorite food, when she got out of the hospital--Great time to be broke too.... That night, before the big Soca Monarch Finals at the stadium, we were at the National Museum for Jazz Night. Usually, Sean will play a song with the band and some volunteers will recite some poetry if they feel inclined. The music and poetry is always stellar. Right, then we got ready to go to the concert. The tickets said that the show started at 8, yea right, that means the shindig will start around 12. The night was a lot of fun, there were tons of people at the stadium, the music was great, things were going good. Emphasis on "were". This may be our fault, but 3 or 4 of the volunteers had their pockets picked, losing their wallets and purses. I say that it is partially our fault because we were down on the main floor, close to the stage where it gets pretty wild, definitely not a place for white people. The concert went until roughly 5am, no one really knew who won, if they did hear the name they had no idea who it was. Minus the missing wallets, the concert was a blast and ended in time for the sunrise--a common theme this weekend--so we chalked the day up as a win.
All day Saturday everyone was either recovering from the long night before or they were preparing for the long night ahead. I slept most of the day before grabbing my bag and my white clothes to head to Matt's in Grenville. That night we were headed to the White in the Moonlight concert. The concert is exactly what it sounds like, everyone dresses in all white and it is a night concert. We had an absolute blast at this concert. In part, this was due to the stellar line up featuring our favorite group Kes the Band (a group that won the Soca Monarch Groovy in Trinidad earlier this year). Our excitement was also due to the Carnival energy that was in the air all weekend, you could almost taste it, it tasted different then the constant smell of weed at the concerts. Kes the Band was phenomenal and after they did some of their own songs they "went around the world" and played music from all over, including some American pop hits. We all danced the night away, this time in the stands so we wouldn't have our things stolen. The concert was slated to start at 8, but most people didn't show up till 12-1am and the bands didn't even start performing till 3-4am. Before we knew it, the sun was coming up which created an even more fun atmosphere. It was a funny thing seeing the sun come up and the night concert evolve into a day concert. People looked so confused as they scanned the crowd for the first time seeing the people they had been dancing and jumping along with for the past 5 hours. Those in the crowd that were high as a kite were especially confused, wondering where this bright light came from. It was quite amusing. By 7am me and the guys decided to head out and find out ride. We waited by the guy's car for about an hour before he finally showed up. Once we hopped in the guy apologized and said he was really drunk. Oh god, this should be an interesting ride... In all honesty, I think the guy was exaggerating or lying to make us think he was cool, he was younger than us so maybe he wanted to prove himself? Whatever the case, he drove absolutely fine and he was capable of speaking perfectly fine with long coherent sentences, not drunk, probably just tired like the rest of us. Caleb, Casey and I opted out of getting some sleep at Matt's place to head to downtown Grenville to find a ride to St. Georges. I had been standing.dancing the entire 7 hour concert because I was afraid that if I sat down even for a second it would be game over and I would be out like Sleeping Beauty. I also decided that heading home was a good idea rather than sleeping at Matt's because I was going to have to get back to town anyways that day to get ready for the next part of Carnival and I wanted to get that travel time (about an hour drive through the country) out of the way first. The three of us posted up in Grenville by the bus stop hoping for one to come around the corner. It was a Sunday after all, and if you've been keeping up with the blog you know that buses don't run on Sundays. You can usually catch one bus out of Grenville in the morning going to town and one in the afternoon, but that's about it. We were hoping the morning one would come soon, but then our favorite taxi driver Godzilla drove by. We flagged him down and hopped in, not surprised to see the rest of the volunteers already in there--they had stayed at the concert a little bit longer. They were quite the site. All of them looked like death, no offense to them, but they were passed out in whatever position they could cram themselves into on this packed bus. Whenever the bus would swerve or bump they would wake up from their daze and be utterly confused about where we were. I, on the other hand, was still fully awake and energized. I talked a little bit with the local sitting in the back, he though I was CIA because I was wearing a shirt on my head and aviator sunglasses. A lot of locals think that the Peace Corps is just a front for the CIA. I suppose that would be pretty effective, but, alas, we are mere citizens. I had Godzilla drop me off by the supermarket near my place so I could buy materials to cook a nice big breakfast and a sweet tea. I was still bright eyed and bushy tailed till 11am when I finally decided I should start sleeping to prepare for the next event.
J'ouvert morning. What can I say about J'ouvert morning? It is probably the wildest and most fun street party I have ever been to and hands down the most fun I've had since being stationed here. This is the event where people cover themselves in motor oil and all sorts of paint, the event where the Jab Jab come out (the ones I pictured last post). To give y'all a better description of the event, allow me to tell you what happened. J'ouvert traditionally starts around 3 in the morning, the name means daybreak in French. I left my place around 2:30am to head towards the starting point which was Lagoon Road in Port Louis (where rich people keep their yachts, like Oprah), there was an eerie feeling in the air as I walked down my hill. It was a mix of the electricity in the air and the terror of the Jab Jab. I arrived a tad bit early and hung out by myself for about an hour before the rest of the volunteers arrived. it was closer to 4am at this point and it was time to have a few drinks and find a band to play in. When we say "play in a band" or "jump up" it isn't as literal as it sounds. Okay, so bands are these big trucks filled with speakers that just blare music and everyone follows behind them and dances. So when you "play in a band" you are just following and dancing behind a particular truck. For J'ouvert, these bands are separated by paint color, also by village they come from but that doesn't matter. All of us found a band to play in, it was probably just the closest one, but I think they had blue paint. I ran around for the first 30 minutes looking for as much paint as I could find to cover myself. John and Stephanie (a married PCV couple) had bought a cup full of green paint for us to share, but that wasn't enough to satisfy us. For the next 7 hours we proceeded to "jump up" which means you participated in Carnival or J'ouvert and you danced your ass off. The band trucks drove slowly towards the end of the Carenage which is maybe one mile, 1.5 miles from the start. Yet, this road trip took soooo long. We once again saw the sun rise. Hell, we were barely 100 yards from the starting spot when we saw the sun rise, that's how slow the march moved. That didn't matter to us, we were having a ball of a time dancing, singing and laughing. I can't tell you what order it happened in, but over the course of the event I went from being covered in white paint, to blue, green, blue, red, purple, orange mud, and finally black motor oil. Great pore cleanser... I saw a few of the fellas on my football team towards the end of J'ouvert, they are still laughing at me for having a good time at Carnival. I grabbed some street chicken and headed back up to my place around 10:30 am to shower, clean my clothes (lost cause), have Lorice laugh at me and take pictures, and sleep before the night's festivities. I snagged a 4 hour nap before waking up to get ready for the next Carnival event. I called Katie to see what the rest of the group was doing, they had hardly slept at all. Some of my adrenaline wore off an hour later and I took another nap before waking up at 6:30pm. I quickly ate dinner, threw on our costumes and headed out the door for Monday Night Mas. This event is very similar to J'ouvert with the exception of paint and motor oil. Everyone still plays in a band, but they are bigger and sponsored by corporate organizations like Lime and Digicel (US equivalent of AT&T and Verizon). Every band has a costume that all the people that paid to play wear. We played in the Lime band and our costumes were pirate outfits, they were pretty rad. Also, since the event is at night (started around 8 or 9pm) each band has light-up stuff as part of their costumes. Ours were flashing light sabres, I guess we were futuristic pirates. Thousands of people played in each band so it was really really cool to see all these flashing lights moving and dancing in unison. The route for our road trip was much longer than J'ouvert. This time, we were starting at Grand Anse and headed to the end of the Carenage, about 4 miles giver or take. Luckily, the trucks moved a lot faster than the ones did during J'ouvert, but still, this was a loooong trip, and we were supposed to be dancing the whole time. When we all first showed up before Monday Night Mas started we were all exhausted, rightly so. Somehow we pulled ourselves together and brought our A-game for the next 3 hours. Apparently the event was being judged? I had no idea until we pulled up to the first "judge stand" about 30 minutes in. We did some silly little coordination with our light sabres, I have no idea what the judges were looking for and who won or if it meant anything at all. It seemed like our theme song for the night was a song called So We Dey--"So we are there" for you English folk--we must have sang and danced to it at least 20 times. Soon after we finally reached town I decided to call it a night and head home, my body couldn't take anymore abuse.
Tuesday was the final day of Carnival. Typically, on this day Fancy Mas is played. This event is portrayed with participants wearing extravagant outfits and performing synchronized dances through the street. We didn't play in this event as it takes money for crazy costumes and a coordinated dance routine that can be repeated for hours. Instead, I stayed at home and allowed my body to return to normalcy while I sat on my veranda and listened to the music and commotion coming from town. Our bodies were absolutely beat. We had danced for hours on end and watch the sun come up 3 nights in a row. We were confused. We were sleeping during the day and we were wide awake and active throughout the night and into the morning. I joked that if Carnival were any longer we would become nocturnal, that is if our livers didn't fail first.
I have a bad habit of writing these blogs as drafts and then forgetting to publish or finish writing them until a week later. Because of this, some exciting and descriptive details have escaped me. For that I apologize, but make sure you click the links I posted to have some more understanding of Carnival. Better yet, come to Carnival next year and have the time of your life!
Picture post of Carnival to follow this one!
Brice
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