“Whine like a Trini” by J. Borisov

Australian-based travel writer Janie Borisov spent the last two decades visiting all of the 193 UN Member Countries, most autonomous territories, several unrecognized states, and all sorts of hidden corners. She holds a Bachelor of Finance degree from Flinders University of SA and a Bachelor of Arts(creative writing) from QUT. She has long sacrificed her finance career to her Travel Bug and is usually found treading some little-known path, taking all the wrong turns, and constantly scribbling in her notebook. When not circling the globe, Janie is busy writing travel stories and working on her first book Tripping All Over.

Whine Like A Trini

The minute I step off the plane in Port of Spain, the capital of Carnival-crazed Trinidad and Tobago, I have to learn a new language.

Whining is the kind of dancing that sends unsuspecting tourists into shock – either nasty or pleasant, depending on their disposition, relationship status, and the hotness of their whining partner. The humping, oops, whining is done to the sounds of soca, and most of soca songs are about whining.

A band is a group of revellers, sometimes numbering thousands, dressed in matching, hysterical and plain outlandish costumes. Feathers and sparkles are just the start of it, the prerequisite minimum.

To play mas is to parade through the streets as part of a band during the Carnival.

A fête is a pre-Carnival party, usually a mammoth outdoor event with thunderous soca, mountains of food, rivers of alcohol, and non-stop whining. Everyone who’s anyone throws a fête: companies, hotels, celebrities, communities, the Army, even the Prison Authority. It’s a way of turning a two-day event into a weeks-long celebration.

Carnival runs Trinidad and Tobago. Fêtes and “Kiddies Carnivals” start on Boxing Day and continue until the main event, usually around March. The scale and fame of Brazil’s Carnival may be greater, but the passion of Trinidad is unmatched and unmatchable. Kids start whining the moment they leave the womb. Oldies whine for as long as they walk. Guys and gals spend most of the year in preparations: sweating at
the gym, saving money, going to costume launches, concocting amazing hair and make-up solutions, doing whatever needs to be done to shine and outdo one another for two glorious days before Lent.

I land at Piarco International Airport a week before the Carnival proper. My backpack fails to make an appearance on the busy luggage carousel, and I struggle to find anyone interested in helping me find it. Nobody. Cares. It’s Carnival! I hit the ground running without my stuff: improvising, buying, borrowing, and going without. Luggage is overrated.

Sending me off on a roller-coaster ride of pure unadulterated bacchanalia is Soca Monarch, a music competition held on pre-Carnival Friday. The soca stars – national heroes in this country – take the stage, and the crowd goes berserk. So wild in fact that I’m forced to reconsider the heavy and serious approach to life I grew up with. Maybe I’ve been missing the point.

Fuelled by sheer curiosity, I follow my newly-made Trini friends from fête to fête. From Insomnia, which gets pumping at midnight, we head straight to Sunny Side Up, which starts at four o’clock in the morning. Then it’s off to a house party, followed by an all-night dance-off in the streets of Port Of Spain. I’m wired to the point the muscles on my face are hurting – what’s to say about other body parts.

J’Ouvert is the start of the Carnival proper, kicking off before sunrise on Carnival Monday. Revellers, dressed in shorts and T-shirts later destined for the garbage bin, assemble around soca trucks and whine through the streets. They’re the moving targets for bucketloads of mud, paint, and chocolate sauce, indiscriminately thrown at every body part, hairdo, in the eyes, inside the mouth if one happens to be open.

By the morning, I look like an unfinished statue
of myself in mud’n’chocolate. This thick shell is
what saves me from a hospital-grade sunburn when, hours later, I’m still wandering the messed-up streets, completely lost. I have been whining for two days and two nights without a break. No part of my body is the same, and those around me are not looking much fresher.

At this point, we are all supposed to go home,
take a shower, put on a Carnival costume, make ourselves gorgeous, and whine for two more days in the Carnival parades. This sort of stamina you have to be born with. You have to be a Trini, not some garden- variety Carnival-goer like me. Happy that I’m not in a band, don’t have a costume, and am not expected to do any more whining, I turn into a sideline spectator for the next two days. Phew.

The Carnival shuts down the country. It invades Port of Spain: its colours too good, its force too overwhelming. Trinis young and young-at-heart lose their sensibilities to the sounds of soca: for two glorious days they get to live in a world where nothing matters except the music and beautiful gyrating bodies – the world of glitter, body paint, and free- flowing rum punch. It’s impossible to get anywhere

or get anything done, but no one complains: on Planet Trinidad, interest rates, retirement plans, health insurance, building inspections, and civil court cases don’t exist. Because, Carnival.

When I head back to the airport for my flight back, I spot my backpack sitting square in the middle
of the arrivals hall. A river of passengers bobs and tumbles over as it lies in silent acknowledgement that everything inside it is irrelevant. Nobody. Cares. It’s Carnival!

I can never be one of them, but I’ve drunk from their energy, their passion, their freedom, and morphed into a more carefree version of myself.

When I’m back in my glasses and a navy suit, labouring over a spreadsheet with a dreamy glint in my eye, the sound of soca in my head will make me twitch, and a tiny spec of glitter will fall onto a page a messenger from Planet Trinidad.

I will go home that night and book flights to Port of Spain in time for the next Carnival. Next time,
I will play mas with my new friends. I’ll wear hot- pink feathers on my head, a sequined bra and a tiny G-string, and so will tens of thousands around me.

As soon as that’s booked, I will sign up for personal training sessions at my local gym and Google hair extensions. I can never be a Trini, but I can do my best pretending to be one.

From the Editor:

We hope that readers receive In Parentheses as a medium through which the evolution of human thought can be appreciated, nurtured and precipitated. It will present a dynamo of artistic expression, journalism, informal analysis of our daily world, entertainment of ideas considered lofty and criticism of today’s popular culture. The featured content does not follow any specific ideology except for that of intellectual expansion of the masses.

Founded in late 2011, In Parentheses prides itself upon analysis of the current condition of intelligence in the minds of these young people, and building a hypothesis for one looming question: what comes after Post-Modernism?

The idea for this magazine stems from a simple conversation regarding the aforementioned question, which drew out the need to identify our generation’s place in literary history.

To view the types of work we typically publish, preview or purchase our past issues.

Please join our community on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram at @inparenth.