Féte Over // Back to Work!
By early morning (if previous years are anything to go by), the city is clean as a whistle. Banks, government offices, and schools are open, and hungover Trinis in VERY comfortable shoes or flip flops are doing their best: counting money, controlling classrooms, dismantling stalls and shops, and collecting piles of garbage.
Carnival garbage is so marvelous that I almost wish that it would stay put for a few hours, to be appreciated: soles of shoes, sequins, styrotex cups and food boxes, cell phones, wedding and engagement rings, false eyelashes, beer and rum bottles, subconscious tourists, strips of silk and satin, old men of East Indian descent, socks, hair pieces, beaded belts and costume pieces, flags and banners, and ribbons and beads.
By nine o'clock all that will be left to say "Carnival Was Here" will be an almost subliminal sparkly later of glitter on the streets, some stray body-paint on walls, and bank tellers in flip-flops and residual glitter.
Serious Christians went to church before work, to atone for the excesses of the festival, and KFC sells fish for Lent. There will be an air of seriousness for a time in the industrial capital of the Caribbean, and we can all go back to our Anti-Aluminium Smelter Rallying and methanol production and advertizing and oil field sub-contracting and car sales, and assume that any foreigners must be here on business.
Until September, when someone will ask "you playin' mas'?" and a gentle buzz will settle on the island.
Next year, we playin' in Harts.
www.hartscarnival.com
By early morning (if previous years are anything to go by), the city is clean as a whistle. Banks, government offices, and schools are open, and hungover Trinis in VERY comfortable shoes or flip flops are doing their best: counting money, controlling classrooms, dismantling stalls and shops, and collecting piles of garbage.
Carnival garbage is so marvelous that I almost wish that it would stay put for a few hours, to be appreciated: soles of shoes, sequins, styrotex cups and food boxes, cell phones, wedding and engagement rings, false eyelashes, beer and rum bottles, subconscious tourists, strips of silk and satin, old men of East Indian descent, socks, hair pieces, beaded belts and costume pieces, flags and banners, and ribbons and beads.
By nine o'clock all that will be left to say "Carnival Was Here" will be an almost subliminal sparkly later of glitter on the streets, some stray body-paint on walls, and bank tellers in flip-flops and residual glitter.
Serious Christians went to church before work, to atone for the excesses of the festival, and KFC sells fish for Lent. There will be an air of seriousness for a time in the industrial capital of the Caribbean, and we can all go back to our Anti-Aluminium Smelter Rallying and methanol production and advertizing and oil field sub-contracting and car sales, and assume that any foreigners must be here on business.
Until September, when someone will ask "you playin' mas'?" and a gentle buzz will settle on the island.
Next year, we playin' in Harts.
www.hartscarnival.com
Comments
Tribe was about 10,000 people! TOO MANY!