T&T : UWI - Splash!

When someone asks me why I chose to come to Trinidad and Tobago (T&T) to do my elective, my answer will be : The Carnival.

If you asked me how I found out about the carnival, the answer is: I was randomly searching Carribean countries and stumbled across this 'Carnival' that's apparently T&T's biggest celebration every year.

So I arrived on a rainy Sunday night to Port of Spain International Airport.

If you have lived a month in silence, which is what I did in New York (well not quite, in fact not at all, but I went there alone) you will understand the joy of meeting a familiar face where you can start yabbering away every second instead of spending silent nights facing your laptop with no internet.

Yes, I was pretty glad to finally see Margaret.

What followed was discovering that we were suppose to share a room, at the back of our landlady's house, with a tiny kitchen, tiny toilet complete with a tiny dog called Sparky.

After going through the process of registration at the hospital, skipping through all the boring details of settling in, we finally looked into the Carnival celebrations that were already going on full swing.

Fetes.
Fete - a French word that means festival or holiday that has passed on to the English language to be used as a label meaning certain events.

First we looked up the different fetes on the carnival website.

Now one piece of advice.
If you were to come like us to T&T and expect to go to a fete, THAT would be a bit of a problem. Not only have you got to know where to purchase tickets (most tickets are purchased from people that you have to call up), you must also know where the venue is AND how to get there.

Not having a car obviously posed as a problem, and not knowing what fete to go for... an even bigger issue.

Thank goodness for here is where our newly befriended housemate steps in.

Born and raised in T&T, she is well versed in fete-ing.

Oh yeah.

So, she suggests we go with her to a Thursday night fete : UWI (University of West Indies) - Splash! and managed to get cheaper tickets for us (TT 160 compared to 240) plus kindly arranging transport with her friend (that drives at 180 km/hour).


Upon arrival at the venue, we were greeted with crowds of people, scores of cars, and TONNES of security.

To enter, all bags were searched and people scanned with a metal detector. Just like entering the departure hall in the airport.
Thank goodness I decided to leave my bazooka at home.

Then what met my eyes when I entered was an open field with a huge dome shaped stage at the end adorned with house-like speakers at the sides.



Boom ... Boom... BOOM...

I actually felt my sternum and ribs vibrating to the beat. I was pretty sure if I was another 50 years older, my heart myocardium would have vibrated along too, I'll get an arrythmia, throw off a clot, block my anterior cerebral artery and probably die from a stroke. If a heart attack doesn't happen first. That is why old people do not go for fetes.

What the area offered were bars - actually make shift tables with bottles of alcohol on them, food stalls and freebies stalls where you can get Lucozade and tattoos for nothing.

No points for guessing where we headed first.


Covered with our respective tattoos and also officially the spokesperson for Lucozade, we headed out into the crowd, waiting for the concert to start.


Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, Machel Montano stepped out on stage.



Machel - who?!

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Wikipedia yourself.

So he appears decked in a tight red suit and all, bursting into his lastest soca hit Antz. Yes, the music the people here jive - sorry, wine - to is the genre Soca.

Machel and another soca singer

Within the 1 week I am here, I can almost memorise the soca songs: Antz by Machel Montano, Bacchanal by Destra Garcia and Tusty by Blaxx. That is because they play the same song over and over again on the radio and over and over again on the TV. Sort of like Hitz.fm back home no?

Mr. Montano appears, struts all his stuff and the crowd goes wild. Apparently, he is T&T's biggest star, and also, according to my local friend, the world's most famous. He performed for a good 1-2 hours and yes, the songs were catchy and his vocals and music was great, but having never heard this type of music before, I found them enjoyable, but not able to fully immerse myself in the pounding beat.

So I try to imagine that MY biggest star of all time: Jay Chou - up on stage.


Singing his songs that I know so well and jumping to his beats that are so familiar.

Fine.

Siti Nurhaliza also can.

Halfway through it rained, but the party continued

After Machel, a whole lot of other stars came out, including Destra Garcia and Chinee, the winner of Synergy TV - a reality Soca singing competition a la American Idol style.

Why Chinee? Because they pronounce Chinese as Chinee - without the 'ese' at the back.

Dressed as a supposedly gaming character

The music and beat went on and on and on and on and on and on up until 5.30 in the morning when we finally decided to leave.

The drive back where we stopped to buy Doubles for breakfast

11.30pm til 5.30am. What in our dear heaven's name made me stay all those hours listening to music I do not know and not having ingested even a drop of alcohol?

One thing.

The wining- grinding.

Watching ok, not doing.

Girls in short SHORT shorts, tight as a stocking and boobs bigger than my head, wining away to the music. Men all young and old, short and tall, thin and fat, handsome and ugly... wining away to the beat.

Let's just sum it up, the way I view it.

A huge orgy with clothes on.

Even the singers themselves, shows the crowd how the shake your booty.

Oh yeah...

It's their way of dancing, it's their way of partying, it's their way of fete-ing, wine they did while I just stared the night away.

While imagining that the singer up there is Jay Chou.



And Jay Chou wining grinding.

No No..

NO.