Sto­ry and pho­tos

by Nigel Teles­ford

De­fend­ing Na­tion­al Ca­lyp­so Monarch Machel Mon­tano made a sur­prise guest ap­pear­ance at Fa­ti­ma Col­lege Old Boys As­so­ci­a­tion’s all-in­clu­sive fete last week­end, end­ing a ten-year hia­tus and ce­ment­ing his Pardy cam­paign to in­flu­ence a record-ty­ing 11th Road March ti­tle.

The 50-year-old icon showed no signs of slow­ing down as he made an elec­tri­fy­ing pit stop and shocked the Fa­ti­ma au­di­ence with a sud­den and un­ex­pect­ed ap­pear­ance, fol­low­ing a riv­et­ing per­for­mance from Bun­ji Gar­lin, Fay Ann Lyons and the Asy­lum band and just pri­or to the clos­ing set from Kes The Band.

The Fa­ti­ma alum­ni as­sem­bled in their num­bers to cel­e­brate the school’s 80th an­niver­sary. The con­ver­sa­tion of the night re­volved around re­peat­ed calls by pa­trons and some com­mit­tee mem­bers to re­lo­cate the event to the ex­pan­sive grounds op­po­site the school. The top brass re­mains res­olute in their stance against this move, but a shut-down of the en­try gates by fire of­fi­cials at one point in the night re-ig­nit­ed the dis­cus­sion mid-event be­fore ap­pear­ances by Yung Bred­da and Mon­tano claimed the full at­ten­tion of the mass­es.

Mon­tano said he gen­uine­ly missed the Fa­ti­ma vibes and al­so apol­o­gised to Tri­ni-born US rap­per Nic­ki Mi­naj in an ex­clu­sive video in­ter­view, which went vi­ral on Sun­day morn­ing af­ter the event, amass­ing over 100,000 views in just over two hours.

“It was a beau­ti­ful feel­ing. Just be­ing on the school com­pound, see­ing that awe­some au­di­ence and re­con­nect­ing af­ter a long time al­ways feels good. Fa­ti­ma is one of those top ones, just like CIC and QRC, and hon­est­ly I missed it and that feel­ing tonight was re­al­ly a bless­ing,” Mon­tano said.

The cor­po­rate box­es at the venue over­flowed with ex­ec­u­tives, min­is­ters and a bevy of beau­ties. This eased the con­ges­tion across the quad­ran­gle and the ad­ja­cent food court be­hind the stage. Some pa­trons com­plained about the lay­out and dé­cor and did not seem to ap­pre­ci­ate the huge pots placed around the venue to ful­fil the theme of “D Melt­ing Pot,” while oth­ers fo­cused sole­ly on sam­pling the vast as­sort­ment of de­lec­table dish­es and bev­er­ages to their sat­is­fac­tion.

Com­plete with qual­i­ty en­ter­tain­ment and en­hanced by the sur­prise re­turn and en­dorse­ment of the Ca­lyp­so Monarch, Fa­ti­ma fete de­liv­ered a qual­i­ty event packed with Car­ni­val en­er­gy, vibes and good val­ue for the $1,500 price tag.

Funds raised from the event will be used to off­set ex­pens­es, im­prove the school’s fix­tures and ac­ces­sories and kick-start con­struc­tion of a swim­ming pool on the grounds op­po­site.