Soyi­ni Grey

Se­nior Pro­duc­er, CNC3

soyi­ni.grey@guardian.co.tt

For Krista Clarke and Te­nille Clarke (no re­la­tion) 20 years of friend­ship and a shared pas­sion for cre­at­ing unique events blos­somed in­to a beau­ti­ful busi­ness re­la­tion­ship. The re­la­tion­ship has re­sult­ed in The Oa­sis, a lux­u­ri­ous Car­ni­val rest stop that of­fers mas­quer­aders and non-mas­quer­aders a much-need­ed respite from the sun and bac­cha­nal of the road.

When the Sun­day Guardian WE caught up with Krista and Te­nille via Zoom to dis­cuss The Oa­sis, their close­ness was as ev­i­dent in dig­i­tal as it was in per­son at the event it­self. They gig­gled when asked about their shared last name, which both de­scribed as a “huge co­in­ci­dence”!

Krista has a rep­u­ta­tion for cre­at­ing im­pres­sive events through de­sign. She has a long re­sume that in­cludes Pri­vate Ryan’s So­ca Brain­wash. Te­nille is a pub­lic re­la­tions maven with an equal­ly long client list, she re­cent­ly worked on the sec­ond edi­tion of Ted­dyson John’s Stripped Con­cert. De­spite a busy sea­son both found work­ing to­geth­er on the third edi­tion of The Oa­sis was seam­less.

Set up at Veronique, a vil­la nes­tled in St Clair, guests were greet­ed with cool­ing tow­els up­on en­try. A wel­come respite for a day where tem­per­a­tures ranged be­tween 33-36 de­grees Cel­sius, but at some points felt clos­er to 44 de­grees Cel­sius.

They were then tak­en through a ver­i­ta­ble gar­den of Eden with stops for drinks, snacks, a mas­sage or even per­haps a pho­to shoot in the gar­den, through a guid­ed walk­way that takes you from the front lawn past guests pic­nick­ing on art­ful­ly arranged blan­kets, to­wards the back where there was the pool and a two-bar set-up.

It was well-re­ceived by guests who were found ei­ther dip­ping their feet in the pool or opt­ing for a full im­mer­sive ex­pe­ri­ence.

It’s all part of what they de­scribe as cater­ing for those peo­ple whom Krista called “ex­pe­ri­ence en­thu­si­asts” like mas­quer­ad­er/den­tist Dr She­nilee Hazel. We found her tak­ing ad­van­tage of the pro­fes­sion­al pho­tog­ra­ph­er on deck, who with re­flec­tors in hand cre­at­ed a last­ing mem­o­ry of her Car­ni­val ex­pe­ri­ence and her full cos­tume.

“I love that they thought of every­thing! You have a mas­sage, you could go to the pool. You could have pho­to spaces,” Dr Hazel en­thused.

An­oth­er fan fave was the pro­fes­sion­al ther­a­pists who were able to pro­vide full-body mas­sages, an­oth­er hit. While on any oth­er day get­ting the re­quired 10,000 steps could be a chal­lenge, on ei­ther Car­ni­val Mon­day or Tues­day the av­er­age per­son could find their step count three times that. It can take a toll, and many guests avail them­selves of the mas­sage ser­vices.

It is this at­ten­tion to de­tail that sets The Oa­sis apart.

“I am not a fore­front per­son, I am very much an ob­serv­er in a lit­tle cor­ner just look­ing, ob­serv­ing, be­cause that is a lot of what I do for my events as well. I ob­serve my au­di­ences, I ob­serve the ex­pe­ri­ences that hap­pen, I ob­serve the trends,” Krista says.

En­try is by in­vi­ta­tion on­ly, and they ad­mit it is not a pub­lic event. But Te­nille in­sists that does not mean that it is “su­per-ex­clu­sive”. In­stead, she ex­plains be­cause the prod­uct is cen­tred on the cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence, they have to keep num­bers low. “We want to make sure that we are al­so scal­ing with in­ten­tion,” she says.

They launched The Oa­sis for Car­ni­val 2020. It was orig­i­nal­ly a two-day event, mean­ing the rest stop was opened on Car­ni­val Mon­day and Tues­day. Post-pan­dem­ic in 2023 they re­opened but on­ly on Car­ni­val Tues­day, a mod­el they re­peat­ed this year to en­sure that there were no dips in ser­vice. Year four may see a re­turn to the two-day mod­el, but be­fore that, we may see oth­er de­vel­op­ments in the brand.

The Clarkes are not just en­tre­pre­neurs, they are al­so mas­quer­aders them­selves. Both have worked at Car­ni­vals out­side of T&T and see The Oa­sis as an ex­port-ready of­fer­ing. This means one should not be sur­prised if they see it pop up at Kadoo­ment or Spice Mas, but they as­sure this will on­ly hap­pen if they can main­tain the same high stan­dard of ser­vice they have on of­fer in Trinidad.