Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

South Quay, Port-of-Spain erupt­ed with colour, rhythm and Car­ni­val en­er­gy yes­ter­day, as mas­quer­aders pa­rad­ed be­fore judges and spec­ta­tors in a daz­zling dis­play of cre­ativ­i­ty and spir­it for Car­ni­val Tues­day.

From as ear­ly as 7 am, judges and on­look­ers be­gan as­sem­bling at the Lord Kitch­en­er Stand.

Short­ly af­ter 8 am, mas­quer­aders be­long­ing to the 10 dif­fer­ent sec­tions of The Lost Tribe, which cel­e­brat­ed its 10th an­niver­sary this year, crossed the stage, blend­ing chore­o­graphed moves with un­in­hib­it­ed rev­el­ry to Machel Mon­tano’s Pardy.

Be­neath the beat­ing sun, mas­quer­aders jumped, sang, hugged, waved and danced their way in­to the next leg of the pa­rade, car­ry­ing with them the elec­tric en­er­gy.

A heavy po­lice pres­ence bol­stered se­cu­ri­ty in the area, which record­ed in­creased crowds by noon.

As the Car­ni­val ac­tiv­i­ty pulsed through South Quay with waves of mas­quer­aders, there were a few mo­ments of de­lays. There were min­i­mal dis­rup­tions to danc­ing as Bun­ji Gar­lin’s Car­ry It and Machel Mon­tano’s Pardy, both con­sid­ered to be the main con­tenders for Road March, were blast­ed re­peat­ed­ly by mu­sic trucks.

One of the spec­ta­tors was vet­er­an Car­ni­val an­nounc­er Jem­ma Jor­dan, a for­mer teacher who al­so lends her voice to the Boston Car­ni­val and New York Labour Day cel­e­bra­tions.

“This morn­ing I am look­ing for a very smooth flow of bands. I hope we have all the bands com­ing here, we al­ready have Lost Tribe wait­ing to cross the stage and they have been the first band for the last two years. We look for­ward to the fan­tas­tic cos­tumes,” Jor­dan said, say­ing Car­ni­val 2025 had show­cased unique cre­ativ­i­ty. “This Car­ni­val, well you know on Mon­days they come with piece of the cos­tume and based on the pieces of cos­tume that we saw yes­ter­day, I can imag­ine that the cos­tumes to­day will be a kalei­do­scope of colour and a nice va­ri­ety of cos­tumes and I am look­ing for­ward to that.”

While thou­sands may have flocked to down­town Port-of- Spain over the last two days, street ven­dors voiced their frus­tra­tion over slug­gish sales. Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, the ven­dors blamed the ex­ist­ing pa­rade route as one of the key con­trib­u­tors for the de­cline in foot traf­fic.

Ven­dors like Pauline Bap­tiste, who re­ly on the an­nu­al fes­tiv­i­ties for a fi­nan­cial boost, ex­plained that mas­quer­aders and spec­ta­tors were be­ing di­vert­ed away from their stalls.

“All they need to do is to make the routes bet­ter like long time than hav­ing them in drome (So­cadrome). That killing them be­cause when you go South Quay, you see­ing all the ven­dors park up and noth­ing not pass­ing there, they pass­ing dif­fer­ent place and they charg­ing peo­ple for them places.”

Ac­cord­ing to ven­dor Sher­win Sander­son, Car­ni­val no longer pro­vides op­por­tu­ni­ties for those con­sid­ered to be dis­ad­van­taged.

“Car­ni­val is not for the peo­ple again, it too com­mer­cialised, big bands, big peo­ple with mon­ey. Car­ni­val used to be ven­dors and poor peo­ple, no longer poor peo­ple and ven­dors any­more.”

Cindy Ja­cob ex­plained that her fam­i­ly has been vend­ing in the South Quay area for years and not­ed that sales have not been as high as in years gone by.

“We had to pay a high rent to sell here so we have to make back we mon­ey and a lit­tle prof­it too.”

While Port-of-Spain May­or Chin­ua Al­leyne hailed Car­ni­val 2025 a suc­cess, he not­ed the con­cerns raised by ven­dors.

“We have some adap­ta­tions that we need to do. We need to en­sure that we keep the Car­ni­val as safe as pos­si­ble, so that we not on­ly po­si­tion the mas­quer­aders and spec­ta­tors but the ven­dors in a way that al­lows the fes­ti­val to con­tin­ue to grow. We have some teething is­sues that we need to work our way through and we’re well on our way to work­ing through them.”

How­ev­er, Al­leyne con­tend­ed that the ex­ist­ing Pa­rade of the Bands route was his­tor­i­cal so it was un­like­ly they would make too many ma­jor changes.