Lucian Carnival – From My Living Room

My only carnival experience to date is Kiddies Carnival in Canada in 2005. My mother signed me up because my half Trini cousin was taking part. I vaguely remember going to the mas camp, and the pictures are a joke (charging $10 if you want to see the worst of them).

Either way, I don’t see myself going from Choc to town in the foreseeable future. It’s not that I have anything against the season of revelry, like some people do. I’m just not so much into people, noise, and I have flat feet and bad knees. My back would be suffering by the Sunny Acres roundabout. I’m positive that everybody who jumps is automatically fitter than me; or at least has age appropriate knees.

So like many people, I enjoyed Carnival from the outside looking in, or more like from my living room scrolling through Twitter and Instagram. I judged costumes, and chose my favourites. I laughed at costume mishaps that happened even before the big days. Who didn’t? I waited for the pictures to pop up to see who looked REALLY good. (You know yourselves).

Other than being a self-appointed critic, there are a few things I absolutely love about St. Lucian Carnival. Time for a nice, short list:

1. The Creativity of St. Lucians: the costume designers, the make up artists, visual artists, songwriters, singers and the like.
2. The Energy: need I say more? No.
3. The Costumes: if you look past some of the mess, some were wonderfully amazing.
4. The Regional & International Appeal: St. Lucian Carnival is on the bucket list of so many people, including the lucky ones who made it to the festivities this year.
5. The Music: still shook from Ms Donna being on the Soca Monarch stage.

I find it absurd that the people who have never been to St. Lucian Carnival are the ones to find things to pick out and criticize. If the people want dancehall, let them have dancehall.

** PS – Still accepting wire bras and hot body gyal pictures