An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

The Ari­ma Car­ni­val Coun­cil (ACC) has in­creased ef­forts to re­vi­talise cel­e­bra­tions in the Bor­ough, and this year part of the cel­e­bra­tions will in­clude a gospel mo­tor­cade.

Ari­ma May­or Bal­li­ram Ma­haraj, dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing in Ari­ma yes­ter­day, ad­vised burgess­es and the wider pub­lic of the cal­en­dar of events planned for the up­com­ing Car­ni­val week­end. He said this was a time for the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors to give back to the com­mu­ni­ty.

ACC chair­man Michael Simp­son said the new coun­cil fo­cused on mak­ing sure this year’s cel­e­bra­tions were bet­ter than those of pre­vi­ous years.

Among the events planned through Feb­ru­ary 9 to 13 in the dis­trict are a med­ical/school fundrais­er; a cool­er par­ty; a fete at the Ari­ma Velo­drome; a so­ca/chut­ney/latin cul­ture clash; and a gospel mo­tor­cade which will be the first of its kind to be held dur­ing the Car­ni­val sea­son.

The tra­di­tion­al of­fer­ings will in­clude ju­nior and se­nior pa­rades of bands and the re­turn of the Bomb Com­pe­ti­tion in the J’Ou­vert cel­e­bra­tion is ex­pect­ed to at­tract more spec­ta­tors and par­tic­i­pants.

Thank­ing Pan Trin­ba­go for giv­ing them this op­por­tu­ni­ty to breathe new life back in­to the com­pe­ti­tion, Simp­son said al­though the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) had giv­en the coun­cil a $300,000 al­lo­ca­tion, they had wit­nessed a pos­i­tive re­sponse from the com­mu­ni­ty’s busi­ness sec­tor who had re­spond­ed to calls for do­na­tions.

Ma­haraj was hope­ful that these mea­sures would stop the flow of peo­ple leav­ing the dis­trict to par­tic­i­pate in Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions in Port-of-Spain and else­where.

Elab­o­rat­ing on the gospel mo­tor­cade which is the first of its kind to be held dur­ing this sea­son, Ma­haraj wel­comed the in­clu­sion of the mem­bers of the faith-based com­mu­ni­ties who had cho­sen to join hands with the ACC, to send a sig­nal that peo­ple can have fun with­out al­co­hol.

Pas­tor Mar­lon Al­varez of the Fel­low­ship of Ari­ma Min­is­ters ex­plained that while church­es do not usu­al­ly get in­volved in Car­ni­val, the cur­rent state of the com­mu­ni­ty and na­tion had made it im­per­a­tive they act now.

He said while peo­ple were out hav­ing a good time, oth­ers were ex­pe­ri­enc­ing feel­ings of hope­less­ness.

In­stead of run­ning or stay­ing away from Car­ni­val as they were ac­cus­tomed, Al­varez said, “We know how to have fun. We know how to laugh and sing and dance, and no­body gets a buss head, and no­body does any­thing to any­body that cre­ates of­fence and every­body leaves with a greater sense of ful­fil­ment than when we ar­rive be­cause there is no un­to­ward any­thing in­volved.”