Sto­ry and pho­tos by

Nigel Teles­ford

Re­search sug­gests that dur­ing pe­ri­ods of height­ened stress, peo­ple are more in­clined to so­cialise, cel­e­brate and seek re­lease through recre­ation. Car­ni­val 2026 may well be shap­ing up as a liv­ing ex­am­ple of this “ten­sion-re­duc­tion” hy­poth­e­sis.

With re­gion­al anx­i­ety fu­elled by de­vel­op­ments in Venezuela, ris­ing costs of liv­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go, and per­sis­tent un­cer­tain­ty sur­round­ing jobs and the wider econ­o­my, Winer­boy En­ter­tain­ment opened the Car­ni­val sea­son with a much-need­ed Sat­ur­day-night es­cape. The ris­ing young event pro­mot­er, which has built a loy­al fol­low­ing from across the length and breadth of the coun­try, drew pa­trons out ear­ly in Jan­u­ary for Brunchin, one of the sea­son’s emerg­ing Car­ni­val starter events, held at Jam­boree Park.

The all-in­clu­sive cock­tails-and-bites af­fair fea­tured a bright “sun­flower” dress code, com­ple­ment­ed by themed pho­to swing sta­tions near the re­strooms. Pa­trons were treat­ed to free mas­sages, Häa­gen-Dazs ice cream, rum or Scotch mo­ji­tos, Cos­mos, Stoli daiquiris and a va­ri­ety of oth­er savoury of­fer­ings.

Live en­ter­tain­ment came from Ray­mond Ram­nar­ine, Mi­cal Te­ja and Iw­er George. The lat­ter vet­er­an so­ca bard was in par­tic­u­lar­ly en­gag­ing form, con­nect­ing ef­fort­less­ly with the crowd and even div­ing in­to their midst for a play­ful stage-cross­ing ses­sion just be­fore the event’s close.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, George said his mis­sion this Car­ni­val sea­son is sim­ple but vi­tal.

“It’s just to en­sure that peo­ple have fun and re­lieve their stress, be­cause times are tough and there’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the coun­try, around the re­gion and the world that can make us anx­ious and tense,” he said.

He added that rev­ellers must re­mem­ber “to let go of the things we can­not con­trol, and to claim and em­brace joy and hap­pi­ness as one of the things we can con­trol”.

Those sen­ti­ments res­onat­ed as a live rhythm sec­tion es­cort­ed pa­trons to their ve­hi­cles, send­ing them off with the promise of many more fes­tive mo­ments still to come this Car­ni­val sea­son. The par­ty con­tin­ued for the Nube faith­ful, who crossed the high­way for the af­ter­par­ty at Winer­boy’s Nube Nueve din­ing oa­sis and lounge at Val­park Shop­ping Plaza.