Junior Carnival in Trinidad

First of all, let me say that this Carnival is so amazing that I'm posting many of photos here in their smallest size so I can include more. Please double click on them so you can see the details and enjoy the children's expressions. The creativity and variety of the costumes can only be suggested here.

Thousands of children participated and almost as many adults. The parade route was jammed with spectators. This is repeated the next day!!! I'm dividing this posting into two with mainly photos in the second posting. This of course when I can get an internet connection strong enough to upload pictures!

The Junior Parade of Bands in Trinidad is on both Saturday and Sunday. Junior means up to 15 years old. There is no beginning age limit. Toddlers of two and three marched in the parade and some babies, dressed in costume, were wheeled in prams.
The Junior King and Queen candidates compete in three earlier evening sessions along with the Senior Kings and Queens. They are usually among the older children and the sturdiest as the costumes are heavy and enormous. Some of the King costumes were more than 20 feet high and wide. The rest of the participants are everychild, with all the family members attached. Fathers,mothers, older siblings and grandparents are sometimes alongside.


They attache the elaborate costumes, paint the children's bodies, and support their progress through the parade. It's a long day starting at 9:00 AM and continuing into the late afternoon. The parade route is over 3 miles and the sun is hot.



There are food, drinks and cold treats available throughout, free. The kids appeared to be eating or munching every moment, except in front of the judges. Then they coalesced into somewhat organized dance groups. It was fascinating watching the "coaches" showing the kids the dance moves. The occasional child that got it had "rhythm - plus focus". Tough and rare combination.



The general divisions are among youth groups, both geographical and organizational. Each chooses a theme. These are mostly traditional, folkloric, historic or musical. A King and Queen lead the group, followed by sub groups within the general theme. Even within the subgroups costumes may vary some, depending on age and choice. All of these costumes are made by hand.


Artists specialize in this area and spend their lives designing Carnival costumes. Mothers and occasionally fathers do the actual sewing or I suppose have them sewn (see the photo with the father mending his daughter's costume above). There are a disproportionate amount of girls in the parade.



Probably only 25% are boys and most of them younger. The few that remain are promenent. The King candidates for example were pretty hardy. The top contenders were forced to carry some pretty big loads. I saw several on portable seats or just hunched over, trying to cope. It was a windy day, especially down by the waterfront.

Pan Orchestra and Single Pan Semi Finals - Trinidad

There are hundreds of events leading up to the actual Carnival here in Trinidad. Thousands of people play in the Pan Orchestras. Eight hundred came from the smaller island of Tobago (the other half of the two island nation) and were put up in hotels and private homes by the Pan Organization.
There are four designations of Pan Orchestras - large (between 90 and 120 players), medium (60 - 90), and small (to 60). One musician may play up to eight drums. The second type of pan group is single pan. These bands can be up to 30 players, each playing only one pan. Pans by the way have many musical designations according to the pitch and sound.

Some are basses and others are tenors. Some only have one octive, others many. They come in a variety of sizes and materials too.
Starting around the first of the year many go to the pan yards (practice areas for a particular band) to watch their favorites prepare for the competitions. Scott went to one before I arrived and these open practice sessions continue all the way to the carnival itself.

We got tickets for the semi finals for the Pan Orchestras last Sunday. The event started at 10 AM and finished at 2 AM. I'm not kidding. We arrived at 1 and left at seven. We would have stayed later but the noise really got to me. Not the bands;they were great and a reasonable decible level. It was the recorded music which filled in between each band. That was at a painful level at times.

The best bands show huge enthusiasm and dance moves of their own while playing the pans. They are the ones that know the music so well, they can clown around and have fun too. It's contagious - the audience responds quickly.

It took around 10-15 minutes to change bands up on the stage. Huge gradually sloped ramps led on and off the stage. The performers and a few helpers pushed the drums and scaffholding up to set up the arrangement. Drums, shirts, scarfs, flags and streamers & fringe were coordinated with the band's colors.

We had tickets for the stands, happily under a roof, and watched the actual perfomances. Many people just walk around outside and watch the bands practicing and moving towards the stage.
We arrived in time to see five small bands and stayed for all the medium bands. During the afternoon we went outside for a long walk and watched several of the big bands practicing.

The fellow above right is obviously practicing as that cigarette wouldn't be allowed Fifteen to twenty bands of each size performed for about 10 minutes. One song is chosen by the band and arranged especially for them. Two or three songs are really popular each year - "Surrender" and "Battle Zone" for example.

The latter was given a spectacular arrangement by our favorite band - snippits of Star Wars and other movie themes were interpursed and the flag wavers and banner carriers were given some fun choreography.
Hundreds of small stands line the streets and sell a huge variety of food. For lunch Scott and I had stewed chicken, rice & beans and salad. Cruiser friends sitting with us chose Corn Soup, made with corn cobs cut in disks and potatoes. Some of the signs advertising their menus were really fun.
One proclaimed "No Weed Sold Here" and another "Wild Meat". You can choose for example lappe, deer, gouti, or wild hog. The ingrediants for one vendor's Souse, normally a thick rice soup, included chicken foot, cow foot and cow skin - oh yummy! Or maybe these ingrediants are served seperately.
For dessert there are of course all the frozen treats we'd see at home and lots of homemade type candies, not usually chocolate here but caramel and fruit flavored. One stand resembled a penny candy shop. I loved the pair of plastic pigs all dressed up above the jar on the far above on the left. Enlarge the photo by clicking the mouse on it to see the details.

The following Saturday evening we went to the Single Pan Finals. These were held on a street blocked off from traffic. In the center some of the audience and the judges sat in stands erected in a park overlooking the street. Most of the thousands of fans gathered in the streets and listened to the bands

practice before giving their final performance. Vendors in small huts and on the street sold all kinds of food and drinks. One vendor, shown at the very top left, sold candy carried on his head and a frontal backpack. We tucked into a shark and bake, good but not fresh cooked unfortunately. Naturally a few cold beers accompanied that successfully.


Our next two events are this coming weekend. We're going downtown Port of Spain on Saturday during the day for the Junior Parade, presided over by the Junior King and Queen of the Carnival. This will feature the Junior Pan Bands, Dance Groups etc. Sunday night is the Final Senior King & Queen and the Calypso Competition. There have already been three evenings of competitions to winnow down the King and Queen entries!

Will we ever get out of here?

My flight to Trinidad was uneventful and it was lovely to be back with Scott, but our situation on the boat isn't as attractive. We are having the entire interior revarnished. It was supposed to be completed while we were gone but it is now four weeks since Scott returned, and it isn't done yet. An observant overseer is necessary to make pr
ogress. We've heard this a million times but didn't take it to heart. We know now.
For the first week after I arrived we stayed in a motel room in the Marina complex and spent our days on the boat. The kitchen was unusable, no doors, floorboards and tons of dust. We ate out more than usual but there was a small kitchenette in the motel room and I cooked some meals there. That's a picture from a Swordfist BBQ evening at the Wheelhouse Restaurant at the Tropical Marina above. The fish was definitely fresh! He's cutting the steaks right at the grill.

Our bedroom needed to be redone - drips in an early coat, so we pitched in as helpers to make some quicker progress. Nigel Barker (that's him above with our ship's wheel), our contractor, was apologetic and we set up a new schedule with intermediate deadlines. So our best guess is that they'll be done by this weekend.
We did get the exterior of our boat cleaned. Tony and his wife Stacy polished the hull when she was out of the water and then the decks and stainless after we were splashed. We're now in the water on the marina dock.

Our new anchor chain is supposed to arrive by Friday, so it's possible we could be out of here on Sunday. The weather reports have been poor for the last two weeks with wind from the NE and wave heights 7 - 9 feet from the same direction (where we're going) but they are moderating and turning more easterly by the end of the week. Yeh!
So the boat is a mess. No floor boards in places (translation - holes in the floors in almost every room), the smell of varnish ever present, our possessions scattered randomly (all cushions gone until the work is completed) etc. But the kitchen is no cleaned up and workable and our bedroom is completed! So we can cook and sleep.
We made good friends with a boat from Juno, Alaska "Quest". Louise and Chris and Louise's brother Ellis (from left to right Chris, Ellis, Louise and Scott) were great companions for several weeks.

They left on Sunday headed west, following our own route of three years ago. An Australian/New Zealand couple Ross and Fran on "Pacific Quest" have been great fun to hang around with too. We've been taking our dinner up to eat with them by the tiny pool at our marina (as we don't have even one of our three tables at present - see the salon as work room at left).
Carnival is approaching here in Trinidad and soon no work will be done at all. Officially Carnival is the 15th and 16th but the weeks before are filled with events. More on this in my next entry!

Washington DC

I was lucky with the weather the ten days I spent in Washington with my two sons, James and Sean, and my sister Paula. They've had a lot of snow this year but not while I was there. Usually a sweater was enough during the day and a light jacket in the evening. Happily Sean was able to loan me the latter during my stay. It was restaurant week and we ate some amazing meals at several lovely places that would normally be way out of our league. I stayed with Paula in Maryland first, then with Sean and his two roommates, Courtney and Piper (below left), then with Paula at the Best Western Georgetown. It was wonderful too to get to know James' girlfriend Morgan. She works at Anthropologie but managed to get quite a bit of time with us. She went to Marlboro College with James but they've really got to know each other here in Washington.

We all went to two excellent plays together; Mike Daisey's The Last Cargo Cult at the Wooley Mammoth and Lydia Diamond's Stick Fly at the Arena Stage Playhouse in Virginia. Paula and I always enjoy going to the Kennedy Center but this weekend's attraction wasn't a favorite of mine. Shen Yun Performance Company is headquartered in NYC and is associated with the new religion Falan Gong.

Huge groups of beautifully costumed dancers in coordinated patterns and with acrobatic maneuvers danced to western orchestral type music composed by members of the troupe. The "operatic" solo performers had less than world class voices and sang what translated as bad poetry espousing, I assume, Falan Gong dogma. We were really glad we hadn't brought the others.
I walked, walked and walked all over the city each morning. It was particularly exciting to spend time on the Potomoc. I visited both the Gangplank Marina and the Capital Yacht Club, and although both were fine, the latter really appealed to me.
Our plans are to be there in "Scott Free" at the end of May! Rather ambitious as we sit here in Trinidad eighteen hundred miles away.
Weeks before I had emailed my old friend Clare Shea and made arrangements to have lunch with her during my visit. We haven't seen each other for probably twenty years. We were both in the Peace Corps, she in Ethiopia and myself in the Philippines. We traveled to Senegal together many years ago. She hasn't changed a bit! We met at the National Gallery of Art and afterwards I spent hours wandering throught the gallerys.
Also alone one morning I visited the National Gallery of Women Artists in their beautiful converted Masonic building. The permenant collection is very interesting but unfortunately I was between special exhibition dates. Paula and I also spent time in the Museum of Native Americans and were impressed with the huge variety of work there. We really only had time for one floor.