Pe­ter Ray Blood

I am yet to ex­hale from Car­ni­val and al­ready my desk is clut­tered with no­tices of events for C2K11. I pre­vi­ous­ly said the first big all-in­clu­sive fete is booked for Jan­u­ary 23, and New­town Boys' RC School has al­ready red-cir­cled Feb­ru­ary 25 for its an­nu­al school yard blow out. Not to be left out, St Crispin's EC School has pegged March 1, 2011 for its Car­ni­val lime. How­ev­er, long be­fore C2K11 rolls in there are the tra­di­tion­al an­nu­al T&T-style car­ni­vals across the globe, in­clud­ing Cana­da's Carib­ana and Lon­don's Not­ting Hill in Au­gust; Labour Day in New York on Sep­tem­ber 6 and Mi­a­mi Car­ni­val on Oc­to­ber 10, not to men­tion Vincey Mas and Crop Over in Bar­ba­dos, in Ju­ly and Au­gust, re­spec­tive­ly.

On lo­cal soil though, our next Car­ni­val–Point Fortin Bor­ough Day–is sched­uled for May Day (May 1). Al­ready up and mak­ing noise, and ac­tu­al­ly launch­ing its J'Ou­vert pre­sen­ta­tion–Re­al Uni­ty–to­mor­row, is Roy­al­ty. The J'Ou­vert Band of the Year win­ner of 2005 and 2007, Roy­al­ty is keen to re­cap­ture the ti­tle this year. A band spokesman ex­plained this week: "The theme for this year, Re­al Uni­ty, cel­e­brates our unique di­ver­si­ty, where every creed and race finds an equal place." To­mor­row's band launch, to take place at the band's head­quar­ters at Techi­er Vil­lage in Point Fortin, is sched­uled to be­gin at 7 pm. The evening promis­es to be quite ex­cit­ing, with a spe­cial per­for­mance by Roy­al­ty Body Art En­ter­tain­ment, along with an ap­pear­ance by the del­e­gates for the up­com­ing Miss Point Fortin Bor­ough Pageant. The Sam­ba girls will al­so be in at­ten­dance. In ad­di­tion, lots of give-al­ways, in­clud­ing ham­pers for the first five peo­ple who reg­is­ter on the day, have been promised.

For fur­ther in­for­ma­tion on Roy­al­ty, call 338-2675. Last Feb­ru­ary 8, for­mer pupils of my old al­ma mater (St Crispin's EC) held a bumper lime at Star­lift Pan Yard in Wood­brook. Yes, I at­tend­ed St Crispin's (Class of 1957), be­fore go­ing to Moul­ton Hall Methodist. This event was or­gan­ised by Nor­man Hunte, Coswell De Peiza and Mar­lene Hunte, and was at­tend­ed by many alum­ni, in­clud­ing Di­anne Daniell, Claudette Alexan­der, El­liott Skin­ner, Char­maine Carter, An­nette Roberts, An­drew Roberts, Yvonne Bar­ry, Trevor Hare­wood, Jas­mine Knights, Gor­don Barnes, Edgar Gar­raway, Ian Jones, Bun­ny Rivers, Noreen Web, Joyce Bar­clay, Ken­rick Haynes, Rhona Haynes and Neville Ma­son.

The evening turned out to be a huge suc­cess, with every­one en­joy­ing the mu­sic of the DJ and eat­ing ac­cra, bake, salt­fish etc. An un­of­fi­cial com­mit­tee is to be formed this year, with the man­date to make next year's event even big­ger and bet­ter. That lime is sched­uled for St Crispin's school yard on Tues­day, March 1, 2011. Michael Headley has al­so men­tioned that peo­ple should be­gin plan­ning from now for Es­cape to Playa del Este in Saly­bia on Car­ni­val Thurs­day, 2011 (March 3), as he in­tends to main­tain a con­trolled at­ten­dance at this much sought-af­ter all-in­clu­sive fete. Michael said he al­so in­tends to rigid­ly main­tain a sub­stan­tial amount of retro mu­sic and live per­for­mances at this do. By the way, you re­alise that all now so, next year, is an­oth­er Car­ni­val done.

The stu­dents of the Uni­ver­si­ty of New Hamp­shire, USA, at the Mara­cas look­out on Mon­day.

US stu­dents ex­pe­ri­ence Tri­ni par­adise

Thanks to my col­league Vidya Thurab, I en­coun­tered some young peo­ple this week who served to rein­vig­o­rate my wan­ing na­tion­al pride. Try as you may, no one can con­vince 13 stu­dents, aged 18-22, from the Uni­ver­si­ty of New Hamp­shire, that Trinidad is not a par­adise. They came to our shores just six days ago but had such a good time they are crav­ing a re­turn vis­it.

Ac­tu­al­ly, it was Trinida­di­an stu­dent Nicole Lee who con­vinced her col­leagues that Trinidad was the great­est place on earth to vis­it and the rest is his­to­ry. Un­der the "chap­er­on­ship" of Ukran­ian Taras Fer­encevych, the stu­dents went to Mara­cas Bay on Mon­day, sam­pling the world fa­mous Richard's Shark & Bake, fol­lowed by a lime around the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah in Port-of-Spain, to en­joy dou­bles and co­conut wa­ter. On Tues­day, the stu­dents vis­it­ed the gi­ant Hanu­man mur­ti in Ca­roni, and the Wa­ter­loo Tem­ple by the Sea.

Fer­encevych said they planned vis­it to hang out in Movi­eTowne on Tues­day evening. For the re­main­der of the week, the stu­dents were sched­uled to vis­it the re­for­esta­tion project in Fondes Aman­des; spend the day Down the Is­lands yes­ter­day Thurs­day; and, do an ex­ten­sive tour of Port-of-Spain on to­day. Nicole's fa­ther, al­so Vidya's un­cle, Richard Lee, as­sist­ed Fer­encevych dur­ing the stu­dents' vis­it.

The group re­turns to the US to­mor­row morn­ing.