Moms tend to do that, you know? That whole “unsung” thing. They leap between tall buildings in a single bound, save the whales, and establish world peace all before breakfast without expecting so much as a single hand clap of applause to acknowledge their efforts. And over the years I’ve learned that our mothers aren’t limited to the sweaty emotional chick we met in that bright room our first day on the planet. They sometimes appear later in life out of nowhere, swooping down to save us from danger, or just make us a sandwich, when our birth mothers aren’t available. That’s precisely what my friend Cass’ Aunty Coral did. She showed up at the airport our first day in Trinidad and without asking permission, established herself as our mother for the next 8 days whether we wanted one or not.

Hospitality doesn’t adequately describe what we experienced while staying with Aunty Coral. As soon as we arrived from the airport her husband, Uncle Len, went to the back room to finish making the bed. Not “refreshing the linens” making the bed, but putting on safety glasses, revving up the saw, cutting up some wood and literally making the bed. Just for us. (insert open-mouthed blank stare of disbelief here)

From picking us up from our first party at 5 AM, to spending the entire next day running errands with us, they did so much in the first 24 hours of our arrival that we started to feel like we were imposing. So we devised a plan. Our second night we planned to walk to the party so Aunty Coral wouldn’t try to leave her house at midnight and take us. When we were ready to leave we simply told her “our ride is here.” Now, I don’t know what it is about Moms but their BS meter is extremely sensitive and can pick up the slickest tricks in the book. When our “ride” showed up, Aunty Coral opened the door and walked down the stairs with us, I assumed to open the gate to the car port downstairs. To our horror, she kept walking, casually chatting with us all the way out to the driveway. That’s when the stuttering started.

“Uh..um, well, I-I mean Mel, um, you think, um, maybe he’s like down the street?”
“Yeah Trace, he’s probably like um… I thought he was…you know..”
“Guys he’s probably just…you know like…late you know? You….um, like traffic?”

Aunty Coral kept a straight face but I’m sure she was cracking up inside as she remembered trying to pull the same stunt in her youth. She slyly told us, “Okay well I’ll just wait with you till he comes.” Mel and I look at each other like FOR REAL? What is this 10th grade? How is she gonna hold us hostage like this? We are grown! Good and grown. I mean who does she think she is anyway? I’m about to tell her about herself because this right here is out of control, and furthermore….

“What ya say, Tracey?” she called out from the back of the driveway.

“Oh nothing Aunty Coral, Mel was saying he’s not too far,” I replied, trying to hold my composure as my respect for my Trini Mom battled my desire to just scale the fence and make a mad dash down the street. 30 minutes passed and Aunty Coral was cool as a cucumber, doing a little yoga while we snapped photos and tried to mask our foiled plan. Our ride eventually came and not a second before did she open the gate to let us out into the street. At that moment I realized this woman was not playing. It was not a game, and our devious shenanigans were not happening on her watch.

Throughout the week she protected us, fighting traffic to pick us up from fetes at dawn, giving us medicine and tea for our deteriorating bodies and laughing with us when we came in stumbling and telling stories from the night’s festivities. Having done carnival for decades when she was young, she enjoyed reliving the experience, making suggestions for our costume remix and requesting mini fashion shows as we decided on outfits for each fete.

The only time I saw Aunty Coral upset with us was on our last day. Right before we left for the airport, Cass gave her a card and when she felt how thick it was, her attitude immediately changed. Her pursed lips, furrowed brow and steam coming out of her ears clued me in that we had crossed the line and violated a serious Mom Commandment – “Thou shalt not buy my love.” She told us the best things in life are free and and threatened to call Cass’s Mom and tell her that her daughter had no home training.

Instead she tucked the money away and told us it would be waiting for us when we return next year. Despite our pleas for her to go buy something nice or pamper herself, I’m confident that money is right where she put it and that next year she’ll try some trick to sneak it back into our luggage. But even if she gave it back it wouldn’t matter because no money could amount to the love she cloaked us in for 8 days in Trinidad. Experiencing Carnival with the wisdom and love of her virtual motherhood was worth more than we could ever sneak into an envelope and I hope that in transcribing my appreciation into this post and sending it to her that she understands how grateful I am not for what she did, but for who she is. Thank you Aunty Coral 🙂

OH MY GOD I’M LOST!!!!

As I looked out into the darkness at the sea of red Digicel t-shirts I felt like a lost toddler in a mall looking out at a bunch of legs that all look like Mom. It had only been 5 minutes since our band, the Cocoa Devils, had started moving when my request for a beer from the drink truck turned into Home Alone 4 live from Trinidad. It felt like an eternity passed as I jumped up and down and waved my hands in the air, frantically running up and down the sidewalk hoping my girls would see me. My panic quickly descended into completely irrational hysteria as I imagined my mother having to identify my body covered in chocolate wearing a blinking cowboy hat.

And then it happened. My friends dropped out of the heavens like manna in the desert. Or maybe I’m being dramatic and they were 2 inches from me and I panicked. Either way, I had never been happier to see Cass, Mel and Nik than I did at that moment when I recognized their faces in the crowd. I ran over and from then on, vowed to never let them out of my sight again…until I heard someone scream..

OH MY GOD IT’S A DEAD CAT!!

The tomfoolery I experienced at J’ouvert will go down in the history books as some of my favorite moments in life. Because I’ve heard many Brooklyn Jouvert stories, I knew to expect paint, powder, water and people smeared in things that I wouldn’t touch if I were paid to do so. What I was not prepared for, however, is how being covered in paint, water, oil and mud invalidates all home training and causes you participate in shenanigans that could get you arrested in some countries. As the sun rose and it apparently became acceptable to down Johnny Walker Black like orange juice, it was like someone turned up the amp on the entire country. The sun revealed a rainbow of bright colors, smeared over a sea of cultures from across the globe, all celebrating the dawn of a brand new Carnival Monday. I danced with British angels, a Korean devil, an Indian woman I mistook for a man, and a older Trini man with a tree growing from his head (don’t even ask). It was like the colors of the paint had erased the colors of our skin beneath and blended into a bright shade of unified energy.

Over the course of the next 2 hours we climbed walls, whined on top of fences, powdered our noses in behind innocent buildings, and gave a good whine to a guy in a wheelchair. Yes you read that right, a wheelchair. I mean, I figured his friend didn’t wheel him out to the road just to watch right? It’s J’OUVERT DUDE!!?? What did he expect? (From the look on his face I think he appreciated the gesture)

For over a century J’ouvert has marked the opening of Trinidad Carnival. At that time it was celebration of ex-slaves who had recently been emancipated and the mud, paint and powder along with masquerading as devils and robbers were all ways to camouflage those who participated in what was a political expression of defiance. Today the tradition continues as a celebration of heritage and Trini playwright Tony Hall describes it perfectly from a local perspective:

“It is half-five, six in the morning, and the colour of dawn coming through and all these people all paint up in different colours, a riddim going and all of a sudden you feel this sense of suspension. You see all these people, all these people are your community and you realise, you feel a strong sense of love and you realise that what you are really doing is renewing a vow to love these people for the year coming.” 

J’ouvert 2011 sealed the deal on my return for 2012 and I vow to love these people, and their music, for many years to come.

If you’ve ever sold a Thin Mint or a Peanut Butter Patty you probably finished off the rest of this Girl Scout jingle without even struggling to remember. As a 6 year old Brownie I used to roll my eyes as I was forced to hold hands in a circle with the other girls in my troop and sing this song. Again. For the 50th time. I mean really what’s the big deal with new friends anyway? Will my new ones not make me sing this song because if so I’m all for it! However, once I left home in South Carolina and started moving every few years, I began to learn how new friends would make my life richer than I could have ever imagined.

When I started telling people that I was going to Trinidad, they would immediately ask, “Who are you going with?” At that point I would pause and try to think of something appropriate to say besides “These chicks I don’t really know like that,” because I mean, who does that? Who runs off to an island to dance in the street for 8 days with mobs of people who have unreasonable access to unlimited alcohol with people you “don’t really know like that?” I mean I kinda sorta knew them (not really for real for real) and collectively we had never done anything together. These weren’t my sorors, crew, homegirls, line sisters, “Brooklyn Dorm buddies” or any other circle that I’m known to hang with. So I described them awkwardly as “these girls I know” because it took a while for me to get it.

And after I had exchanged over 600 emails with these girls excitedly planning out our trip and taking Gmail’s thread feature to a new heights of insanity, sadly, I still didn’t get it. After we deposited hundreds of dollars in each other’s bank accounts without a day’s notice for parties some of us had never been to, I didn’t get it. And even as we stood on the street outside of our first party in Trinidad at nearly 1 AM trying to scrounge up enough money between the 5 of us to buy a ticket from a scalper for one of us who ended up without one, I still didn’t realize who “these girls” had become. But as four of us stood on the beach in Maracas Bay yesterday, cheering as one of us performed African dance moves in front of a steel pan band,  I realized “these girls I know” – Cass, Mel, Nik and Sim – were those new friends I had been taught about as a Girl Scout.

As Cass timidly got up from her beach chair and walked over to the drummers behind us it was clear that the steel pans had stirred up a dance in her spirit and her effort to contain it due to the crowded beach was futile.  As she twisted her hips and flung her arms into the air, we clapped and cheered as a crowd gathered to watch her impromptu dance performance. Her body was an extension of the drums, and the beat flowed seamlessly from the steel pans up through her feet and into her flailing arms as she mesmerized the crowd. Her energy was contagious because as she exited the circle, Sim entered with her own unique rhythm and style we had grown to recognize over the week, winding and twisting to the drums and pushing the energy even higher. Instead of entering the circle & making a hot fool of myself I remained on the sidelines, capturing video and beaming as they drew compliments, photographs, and free drinks from the crowd.

It was the perfect ending to an experience that I still have not found words to properly describe. 10 years from now when my (non existent, not-on-the-way, calm down Daddy) daughter finds the photos on the family computer of Mommy dancing in the street covered in chocolate baby oil, I probably won’t dwell on the details of my carnival experience. I can’t really explain dancing in a stranger’s water hose on the street at 5 AM or tearing the skin off my leg trying to climb a moving truck to rest my feet for the infamous stage. I can however teach her to make new friends, but keep the old because one is silver and the other will help you off the ground when the skinny boy trying to showboat for his Trini friends can’t hold your weight and drops you in the middle of the street at Carnival. Gold doesn’t get any better than that.

I had good intentions ya’ll. I really did. The past 3 days have my brain on such a sensory overload with the new music, dances, history lessons, food, drinks, hilarious moments and general tomfoolery that  I couldn’t wait to get home and try to unload stories into my blog but um…yeah. It is not a game guys. Like, seriously. Apparently I am pledging Trinidad Carnival Inc. because I do not sleep like normal humans are supposed to and am convinced that with all this “winin’ to the left” my thigh muscles are going to shut down this entire operation.

I have been to 4 parties in 48 hours. Yeah, exactly. Pull out your calculator and do the math on that! I’ve danced through sunrise every morning, have given up on watches/clocks/time in general and am still not sure if right now is Saturday night or Monday morning. But it’s like you don’t even notice what time it is, or what day it is or where you are because all that matters is this guy behind you is wining so hard that if you don’t hold your own you may end up the ground asking God why hath He forsaken you. For those who don’t know the term, wining (I assume a version of “winding”) is a dance move where you basically walk up to the closest person in your vicinity, hold on to them (or somebody stable nearby) and WEAR THEM OUT. Yes, in all caps. As the conservative young Christian woman I am, I just had to clutch my pearls at all those fast girls I saw on the dance floor (that was for you Mom 🙂

However, its all in good taste. I know that sounds like a cover-up for pure debauchery but it honestly is all in the name of fun and carnival love. I cannot even describe the energy at these parties. All inhibition is thrown out of the window along with pretentiousness, arrogance, conceit or any other unnecessary hindrance to having a good time at a party. All that standing around scoping the scene, looking cute waiting for the “right guy” or a”girl worth dancing with” is out the window. Nobody cares what school you went to or wants your business card. All that MAC eyeshadow you spent 20 minutes applying perfectly has melted into the steel drums of the soca music and any set of feet that walks up behind you is worthy of a good wine just because…its carnival.

There is a pride and energy in the air here that is infectious and I’m so thankful to be a part of it. I could write post after post about the electricity at the Marchel Mantano performance, or what it’s like to dance in the streets at sunrise on top of cars. Or about how my friend’s Aunt tried to hold us hostage the other night against our will. But instead to avoid more photos like the one above, I’ll take notes and tell you guys all about it later. It’s Carnival. And tomorrow morning is my first Jouvert. Wish me luck 🙂