Carisa Lee

The or­gan­is­ers of the an­nu­al Kam­bule re-en­act­ment chan­nelled the en­er­gy of their an­ces­tors this year to en­sure the event took place yes­ter­day.

Against the back­drop of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and a state can­cel­la­tion and the rainy weath­er yes­ter­day, the event took place at Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA), Port-of-Spain.

“Car­ni­val lives in the hearts of the peo­ple…that cel­e­bra­tion of eman­ci­pa­tion has nev­er been able to be killed,” play­wright and di­rec­tor Pearl Ein­tou Springer said dur­ing the event.

On Tues­day, the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) an­nounced that it was not putting on the event.

“We were in­vit­ed to be part of the am Taste of Car­ni­val and then we were dis­in­vit­ed,” Ein­tou Springer said.

Ein­tou Springer told Guardian Me­dia that they were pre­pared to host the event this year even be­fore NCC’s in­vi­ta­tion and with the help of their spon­sors, they were able to put on yes­ter­day’s pro­duc­tion.

“We thanked them for the fact that they loaned us the bleach­ers that we have there and we do what we have to do,” she said.

In a small­er event and at a dif­fer­ent lo­ca­tion than the usu­al Pic­cadil­ly Greens, just af­ter 5 am, the 1881 reen­act­ment be­gan.

A scene from the Dame Lorraine Ball during the Kambule re-enactment at NAPA, Port-of-Spain, yesterday

KERWIN PIERRE

Start­ing with the gov­er­nor’s ball and go­ing through a se­ries of events, in­clud­ing fea­tur­ing var­i­ous protest mas that emerged in the 19th cen­tu­ry as a state­ment against sex­u­al vi­o­lence and ab­sent fa­thers.

There were al­so por­tray­als of the time through the Jam­mettes Con­fronta­tion, Dame Lor­raine Ball and Young King and Queen which cel­e­brat­ed the tal­ents of the young peo­ple in the com­mu­ni­ty.

Then the reen­act­ment of the an­ces­tors’ fight be­gan with Who is the Dev­il, the ar­rival of Cap­tain Bak­er, who beat and ar­rest­ed stick fight­ers.

Cariso Jane sang on be­half of women while prepar­ing the com­mu­ni­ty for bat­tle.

“Let me tell you about Cap­tain Bak­er, he’s a re­al bad po­lice you hear, he come here from quite Eng­land to say we Kam­bule ban, well he in for a big sur­prise, Bak­er you and your boys eh so wise, be­cause for we right we well in­tend to fight, san­ti­man­i­tay,” Cariso Jane sang.

Ein­tou Springer said af­ter­wards she be­lieves women in this coun­try need to chan­nel the sim­i­lar type of en­er­gy that the char­ac­ters yes­ter­day ex­ud­ed now more than ever.

“Here in T&T, our women need to take more of their an­ces­tral role,” she said.

She added, “Cul­ture and the arts are ways of trans­form­ing and sav­ing our young peo­ple, I don’t know when we will recog­nise that in this so­ci­ety and make prop­er pro­vi­sions for these young peo­ple so they will have a sense of self.”

A group of women perform during the Kambule re-enactment at NAPA, Port-of-Spain, yesterday.

KERWIN PIERRE

To keep the youths in­ter­est­ed, the play­wright al­so in­clud­ed cur­rent top­ics in the reen­act­ment such as the con­tro­ver­sy over Nic­ki Mi­naj’s claims that her cousin’s friend’s sex­u­al prowess was af­fect­ed by the COVID-19 dis­ease.

Pa­tron Ka­maria Cu­pid-Wil­son brought her tod­dlers to the event.

“Pay­ing homage to my an­ces­tors, I de­cid­ed to car­ry on the tra­di­tion,” Cu­pid-Wil­son told Guardian Me­dia.

There was an­oth­er show sched­uled for yes­ter­day evening and an­oth­er one to­mor­row.

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