An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Over 100 en­trants signed up to par­tic­i­pate in Tues­day night’s Tra­di­tion­al In­di­vid­u­als Com­pe­ti­tion at Adam Smith Square, Wood­brook.

Fea­tur­ing ole time char­ac­ters such as the dame lor­raine, mid­night rob­ber, pier­rot grenade, fan­cy in­di­ans, sailor mas, min­strel, moko jumbies and the jab jab—the event suc­ceed­ed in at­tract­ing hun­dreds of on­look­ers.

Start­ing al­most one hour lat­er than the sched­uled time of 7 pm, the stand was filled with spec­ta­tors even be­fore the Na­tion­al An­them was played at 7.43 pm.

Lin­ing the north­ern side of Ari­api­ta Av­enue, many of the spec­ta­tors set up their chairs on the pave­ment as well as along the road’s edge just out­side the se­cu­ri­ty bar­ri­cade as they vied for the best spot to watch the com­peti­tors.

Be­sides the ma­ture au­di­ence, babes in strollers were al­so seen en­joy­ing the par­ty at­mos­phere.

The com­pe­ti­tion be­gan with Fi­don Hon­ore whose por­tray­al of the mid­night rob­ber fo­cused on the ad­vent of the “necro-mas­ter”.

Read­ing his pre­sen­ta­tion aloud from his cell phone as he threw bits of “food” as he crossed the judg­ing stage, he laughed rau­cous­ly and cack­led, “No­body will boy­cott food”.

Among the par­tic­i­pants were three mem­bers of the Al­fred fam­i­ly—Renel­la, Ri­val­do and Re­nal­do—who kept the crowd thor­ough­ly en­ter­tained by the echo­ing sounds made by the crack­ing of the jab mo­lassie rope whips. The fam­i­ly from cen­tral Trinidad has been pro­mot­ing tra­di­tion­al Car­ni­val char­ac­ters and mas in re­cent years.

For­mer pres­i­dent of the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) and cur­rent pres­i­dent of the Har­vard Sports Club, Bri­an Lewis, pre­sent­ed one of the more elab­o­rate cos­tumes for the night as he por­trayed The Mid­night Ban­dit.