- (For David E Bratt MD who believed “Trinidad being Trinidad, you cannot not have a jokey category,” and “The good: the Carnival spirit. So little yet so the little means so much.”)
By Tony Deyal
When it comes to Carnival in Trinidad and Tobago, what we know for sure is that most of the men, and not so many women, get ready to rumble with extremely tight costumes. What that means first, and foremost, is that to squeeze yourself into a “Fancy Sailor” or even a “Moke Jumbie” for that matter, you must take the pressure and go for broke.
These days I hear that Trinidad Carnival folks get some jokes for not trying, but many of them suddenly start doing 500 crunches in bunches from the first of January until a day or two, if you reach Monday, February 16, the first of the two Carnival days. If you did some more hard exercise earlier, you could jump up and lime from before the week, certainly before the weekend. If you didn’t, you can lie and say you did, or you can say, “My boss so like his Carnival that he made me work harder than usual. Imagine, I had to do a double for the whole two weeks, and I had to beg him for me to get a break because if I’m not there with my wife, she might end up with somebody else!”
I was involved in Carnival and Calypso, as well as helping my colleagues in bands for carnival in one of the southern areas of Trinidad. Most of us were involved in a group on the Monday lime, making noise, hanging on to the ladies, pushing the pans, and drinking rum until you drop from the group to the side of the road and sleeping.
The second day, Tuesday, I was told by my boss, the head of the Band, that “no rum for you. You had to be ready to let everybody know about the band, my leadership, what we were playing and each group and its leader.” As I said: “But…” I heard the boss say, “You want to dead, or what? Not just me, but all the fellers because we know you, the only one who can talk English.”
The good thing was that the boys and I, as crickets, footballers, climbers for other people’s mangoes, coconuts and, sometimes, chicken. So, for us it was easy to get into great shape for Carnival, even me. According to big-time experts, you had to focus on sustainable fitness (as my friend said, “Tony, what wrong with you? I am not getting into that until I wake up and the rum finish).
Then one of the people in charge of the boys involved in the football group said we must start with “HIIT.” The boss shouted, “You mad or what. Start that, and we will hit you first and last.” The boss looked at me and said, “Tony, you take over this, you hear! And fast.”
I knew immediately that I should not talk about strength training and endurance-building cardio or things like hydration (which would have my friends talking about, “Tony, I don’t mind a low one, but I prefer good food, sleep, take a few drinks and get some more food.
Worst, Mr HITT jumped in with: “You can at least include active elements like Zumba. Unfortunately, one of our boys was named Zumba. Everybody laughed. “Zumba? Zumba?” One of them added, “Zum can’t stand up without falling down, and you want him to be with we?” Another joked, “Zum will ‘zoom’ you out of everything you have and see it for money to buy rum!” Then the final joker told me, “Tony, it is better we get a “Tumpa” (Bengali name for girls), or a ‘Crump’, who is a noise maker, or even “Slump” like how he falls in the road when he is drunk, and that is often!” That led me to think that we could walk faster to go to the cinema, swim in the river without clothes, so that if an animal comes at you, that will be even better as exercise, and you can even run like hell if you see one coming.
Then thing you know, our Mr HITT come back to tell us what to do and the guys threaten to use him as a football and hit him for six. Then they shouted to me to get the training going with what our football boss feels is best for us. Yoga. That was worse than HITT. As I expect one of the boys shouted, “Tony, you Yoga home crying and bleeding if you continue with this, you know.” By that time, I was ahead of them, running fast and shouting, “Mummy, Mummy, open the door, ah, coming home!”
Fortunately, the Trinidad and Tobago Guardian Newspaper made one of their columnists, Brian Chin Leung, with “Quick Carnival shape-up” including “Healthy? Start? To Fitness.”
It started with, “Sadly, it has become part of the Trini doctrine that December is for eating and January is for trying to quickly get in shape for Carnival. You are probably now regretting that you procrastinated so much with your Carnival fitness programme. You are also conjuring up images of your friends with tight, toned abs (abdominal muscles) and defined arms, while you visualise yourself looking like flab personified. In fact, you have become so desperate that you are now trying to encourage your overweight friends to play in your section, so that you won’t look so bad. You have also decided to run the Queen’s Park Savannah every day and a crash diet as well.
However, I have some bad news and good news for you. The bad news is that if you put the above training strategy into action, you may either end up looking emaciated, or you may be watching the parade of the bands on TV from your bed, since your self-inflicted, weakened immune system could not stop the onslaught of the influenza virus.
The good news is that if you follow my plan of action, you may just end up looking decent come Carnival time.” Unfortunately, he came up with “HITT” and at this point is one of the worst four-letter words in Carnival and could end up in either “Bacchanal” or a song by a Calypsonian about “Take the last Chin to Glycaemic Index.” Obviously, he is one of the best in the business, and I knew he was much better than most. However, he had no choice because he had to write about carbs and weight.
The fact is, according to a comment on Trinidad Carnival, “Preparation has men doing intense, last-minute gym sessions, buying expensive costumes, and practising their ‘wine’ to look good for the road.” It is easy for the “carnivalisers” to answer the question, “Why did he start the gym in January? Because he realised his carnival costume is just a headband and a prayer.”
Others spend more than six months lifting weights and only two hours deciding on the right Soca outfit. My father did less. He and his friends drank Forres Park Puncheon, which offers a proof so high that you fall on your face and sleep the whole night and the next day. But, regardless of race, colour, and creed, “Carnival Ready” means eating a “pholourie” (a popular Caribbean street food consisting of small, deep-fried spiced dough balls) and asking for more.
*Tony Deyal was last saying, like Dr Bratt, “Carnival: The Good, the Bad and the Jokey.”
