CHARLES KONG SOO

charles.kong­soo@guardian.co.tt

The T&T Red Cross Chil­dren's Car­ni­val fond­ly known as Kid­dies Car­ni­val got off to a late start around 12:15 than the sched­uled 11 am at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.

Af­ter two years with no kid­dies mas, the ju­nior mas­quer­aders were rear­ing to go and took to the stage in all their colour­ful splen­dour and glo­ry.

Their glee was ev­i­dent on their smil­ing faces as they jumped and danced in joy­ful aban­don in front of a mod­est, but ap­pre­cia­tive and en­thu­si­as­tic au­di­ence.

Not even the rain could put a damper on the event when the sixth small band Dat Is Ah True ap­peared on stage ac­com­pa­nied by some rain­fall. Ac­com­pa­nied by white gos­samer-clad dancers, and Bele dancers, the band's La Reine Rive queen's cos­tume was ma­jes­tic, and the mas­quer­ad­er por­trayed the char­ac­ter with aplomb.

The colour­ful Moko Jumbies showed their skill in main­tain­ing their bal­ance and danc­ing on the slip­pery stage.

El Puente (Span­ish for The Bridge) a small band that pro­motes in­te­gra­tion be­tween Venezuela and T&T through art and cul­ture had eight Venezue­lan chil­dren and eight T&T chil­dren por­tray­ing lit­tle Bur­ro­keets and Mok­i­tos (lit­tle Moko Jumbies).

An­oth­er small band D Re­turn of D Bur­ro­keets was al­so filled with Bur­ro­keets and Trib­ute to The He­roes of Tra­di­tion­al Mas was re­plete with oth­er tra­di­tion­al Car­ni­val char­ac­ters such as drag­ons, Fan­cy In­di­ans, Book­man and Mid­night Rob­bers.

Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell was in praise of the Red Cross Chil­dren's Car­ni­val and the chil­dren's pa­rade.

Mitchell said "I love it. It's rem­i­nis­cent of the days when I played Kid­dies Car­ni­val. I played Kid­dies Car­ni­val here once, but I played all through pri­ma­ry school in San Fer­nan­do.

"I ab­solute­ly love it. I was look­ing for snow cone and cot­ton can­dy be­cause those are mem­o­ries I have. Ab­solute­ly beau­ti­ful.

"The cos­tumes are pure cre­ativ­i­ty; this is us, our cul­ture, our mas. We at the min­istry are proud spon­sors of the Red Cross Kid­dies Car­ni­val for decades."

He said it was like a cir­cle, younger peo­ple falling in love with the mas, be­came cre­ative, grew up to play mas, be­came cos­tume de­sign­ers, and cul­tur­al prac­ti­tion­ers.

When asked what could be done to at­tract more peo­ple to sup­port the chil­dren's Car­ni­val, he replied that he had spo­ken to or­gan­is­ers and was al­so in dis­cus­sion with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion about go­ing di­rect­ly to pri­ma­ry schools, so they can com­pete.

Mitchell said when he played Kid­dies Car­ni­val a long time ago, it was pri­ma­ry school-based with some in­de­pen­dent mas bands and get­ting pri­ma­ry schools par­tic­i­pa­tion was im­por­tant.

He said he un­der­stood some of the chal­lenges or­gan­is­ers and schools faced such as re­cent­ly emerg­ing from the pan­dem­ic, how­ev­er, they were able to or­gan­ise this year's chil­dren's Car­ni­val and next year will be even big­ger and there will be ver­sions in San Fer­nan­do, Cen­tral and through­out the coun­try as well.