It's Carnival, Baby!

This year's Carnival theme is Culture, Mas, and Rhythm for Carnival 2007. (it always rhymes.) Mas means party. Sunday I got my hair braided with my friend Gaylin. Now everyone thinks we look the same. Two white girls with the same braids, about the same length hair, roughly similar body size. At the food fair yesterday someone said "weren't you just here?", I'm pretty sure they were thinking of Gaylin.

My friend Tara (from UCSD and Boalt) is visiting from Alaska right now. We went to the Food Fair together yesterday after she arrived on the seaplane via San Juan. Earlier in the day, Dave and I had scoped out the fair. We bought spicy hot tamarind balls from the same vendor who sold them last year - we were very excited to discover that the vendors set up in roughly the same location. I learned that spicy tamarind balls, as opposed to just sweet/tart ones, are a Trinidadian thing. We had whelk (a sea snail, like conch) and rice, as well as saltfish cakes and a saltfish pate. Dave got maubi to drink (pronounced "mah-bee" - I learned after coworkers teased me ("what did you have? please repeat." "did you hear her? she had mow-bee!" :)) We also bought some pumpkin fritters and banana fritters. Friends who will be joining us this weekend from San Juan have been very excited about tasting the pumpkin fritters. Good thing we bought some in the morning, because by the time Tara showed up, fritters were all gone. Most of the places were out of pates too. But Tara got a ginger sugar cake and we bought a doucana (doo-cah-nah) which is a side dish that is always sold in a tin-foil wrapped log. It is made with spices (nutmeg?), banana, coconut, sweet potato, and maybe some corn meal, and it's wrapped in a banana leaf for cooking. We each had a bite with dinner last night and I wished we'd bought more!

This morning was J'Ouvert. It's one of those things that just can't be described - you have to experience it! But I'll do my best - it's a big street party that starts early in the AM. "Warm up" is at 12:30am, the actual event starts at 4:30am, but it's island-time. We got there by 8am this morning; it stopped raining just when we were walking out the courthouse door. About five bands make up the "moving parade" - each band is on a huge truck the size of a semi, but with space for the band, and no side walls. They drive maybe one-two miles per hour and are surrounded by dancers in the street. We are the dancers though. Everyone joins this party as it moves down the street. You can work your way from one band to the next. We found the free booze truck too and got our free Coors Lights and Cruzan rum. If we hadn't found that, we'd be stuck paying for it, but it seems that everyone is selling booze on the side of the road outside their pickups or at a table stand. It's really, really loud, and crowded. Even though it was overcast, it was pretty hot and humid from the rain. I learned from last year that it's important to bring a change of clothes to work! After we were all done "jumping up" (dancing), the court has a pot luck breakfast for all the revelers where we tell everyone about our J'ouvert experience. Maybe 1/3 of the employees here stay at work; 1/3 take a vacation day; and the other 1/3 of us participate in J'ouvert.

Photos will be uploaded later!