GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

De­spite heavy rains, scores of peo­ple turned out to the launch of Car­ni­val 2025 on Sat­ur­day evening, ea­ger to join in the cel­e­bra­tion.

The event, themed No Place Like Home, was in­spired by the in­fec­tious hook of Mi­cal Te­ja’s 2024 Road March win­ner, DNA.

Chair­man of the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) Win­ston “Gyp­sy” Pe­ters, who de­liv­ered open­ing re­marks, said Car­ni­val con­tin­ues to be a key for­eign ex­change earn­er for T&T, not­ing that last year it gen­er­at­ed US$93 mil­lion.

“And that is con­firmed by the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO). The up­ward trend we are see­ing in vis­i­tor­ship to our coun­try for Car­ni­val, the NCC’s in­ter­ven­tion in Car­ni­vals around the world dur­ing the year is reap­ing the ben­e­fit,” he said, adding that “whether by sea or air,” tens of thou­sands of na­tion­als and non-na­tion­als con­tin­ue to flock to T&T—the home of Car­ni­val.

Pe­ters was al­so con­fi­dent that the coun­try’s forex earn­ings could be in­creased by show­cas­ing more of the fes­ti­val to the rest of the world.

“We have so many ac­tiv­i­ties hap­pen­ing out­side of Mon­day and Tues­day for Car­ni­val that we owe it to our­selves to ex­pe­ri­ence them, and we owe it to the rest of the world to share it with them.

“Whether we are reach­ing out to na­tion­als or vis­i­tors, our mes­sage for 2025 is very clear—when it comes to the great­est and re­al Car­ni­val ex­pe­ri­ence on earth, there is no place like T&T, and there is no place like home,” he said.

The NCC chair­man out­lined ex­cit­ing plans for 2025, in­clud­ing phase one of the Grand Stand project, which has al­ready be­gun. An­oth­er high­light will be the re­turn of the John Cu­pid Car­ni­val Vil­lage at Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, a pop­u­lar at­trac­tion of­fer­ing a va­ri­ety of food, crafts, and more.

De­scrib­ing the lo­ca­tion as one of the main high­lights for the sea­son, Pe­ters said they will al­so pro­vide free “top-notch en­ter­tain­ment” to the pub­lic at the cen­tre.

How­ev­er, he added, “I want to tell you that while all of it is free to you, we must al­ways re­mem­ber noth­ing in life is free. Some­body pays for it.

“So we at the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion and the Gov­ern­ment be­lieve it is our way of giv­ing back to our pub­lic and our peo­ple by do­ing these things for you,” he ex­plained.

As part of the cel­e­bra­tions, pa­trons were treat­ed to a dis­play of tra­di­tion­al Car­ni­val char­ac­ters, in­clud­ing jab jabs, fan­cy In­di­ans, dame lor­raines, mid­night rob­bers, and colour­ful pier­rot grenades.

Per­for­mances al­so fea­tured from the joint 2024 Panora­ma large band cham­pi­ons Trinidad All Stars Steel Or­ches­tra.