f Paria - Ins and Outs of Trinidad & Tobago 2013

Heritage
In case you were thinking that the
sleepy sister isle of Tobago can’t match
Trinidad for Carnival-like excitement,
there are four annual Tobago events that
will change your mind. Whereas Trini
festivals tend toward the modern and
ultrasophisticated, Tobagonians celebrate
differently, with simpler, more pastoral
pleasures that don’t necessarily require
you to dress up to enjoy.
Goat and Crab Races
At Easter you can catch the hugely
popular Goat and Crab Races, held in the
Buccoo and Mt. Pleasant villages. Yes, you
read right—goat and crab racing. Most are
skeptical at first, but these unique sports
can become very addictive. You may find
yourself cheering your favourite ruminant
or crustacean as it races along the grasscovered
track. Like horse racing, there are
goat owners, goat jockeys, crab owners
and crab jockeys. Thankfully, unlike horse
racing, the jockeys don’t ride the goats
and crabs: they run alongside them.
Visitors have been known to jump in with
both feet and help the jockeys urge their
chosen racing crabs to victory. Most times
there are no set lanes to run in, so goats,
crabs and jockeys jostle each other to
keep their lead. May the best animal win!
Tobago Heritage Festival
The Tobago Heritage Festival is easily
the biggest and most feted of Tobago’s
events. The annual two-week eruption
of cultural and historical presentations
is usually held from July to early August.
‘Heritage’ as many locals call it, celebrates
the traditional customs of a largely
African-influenced Tobago, in the dances,
music, religion and rituals and food that
Tobagonians claim as their birthright. These
long-held practices are so important that
the Tobago House of Assembly’s Division
of Community Development, Culture and
Gender Affairs along with the Heritage
Committee, made up of representatives
from each village, held a symposium after
the 2009 Heritage Festival to evaluate
the event and find new ways to keep next
year’s festival fresh while retaining its
important historical value.
The festival travels throughout the
island, touching several villages with its
celebratory spirit, including Belle Garden,
Roxborough, Charlotteville and Les
Coteaux. Each village boasts a signature
event. For example, the Ole Time Wedding
usually takes place in the village of
Moriah. The wedding re-enactment is
a cultural microcosm of an earlier time
where the dress, attitudes and morals
of the Europeans were actively blended
into the day-to-day life of Tobagonians.
Values like purity and fidelity, as well as
practices to promote the fertility of both
bride and groom play an important part in
the day’s rituals. Women wear floor-length
colourful gowns, and the men are outfitted
in formal scissor-tailed suits, reminiscent
of England’s Regency period. The bride
(who wears white) and the groom, lead a
procession to the reception site, doing an
elaborate heel-and-toe walk ritual. There,
guests are treated to a proper feast and
dance the jig and reel long into the night.
The Sea Festival in Black Rock, Wake
and Bongo in Whim and Charlotteville,
Roxborough’s Ms. Heritage Personality,
the Junior Heritage Festival and the
ongoing Food Fair are other festival
hotspots to hit. The Sea Festival
commemorates the slaves’ emancipation
and their subsequent initiatives to find
another source of income from fishing.
It also celebrates the methods by which
the former slaves developed strong
community spirit in order to survive. During
the festival, participants recreate the time
when entire fishing villages would turn out
to “knit” (mend) or “shoot” (throw out) the
seine or net. Persons learn the old ways
preserving fish, and are taught communal
morals when everyone gets some of the
fish that’s caught.
Ms. Heritage Personality is not a
beauty competition but rather a contest
to see which participant can most
aptly demonstrate aspects of Tobago’s
traditional customs. Typically, teenaged or
young adult contestants are given a theme
upon which they build a presentation,
complete with props and costumes.
The Wake and Bongo honours the
mystical side of Tobagonian culture,
filled with rituals that contain both
Christian and African religious elements.
It is one of the rituals that it shares with
Trinidad, although each island celebrates
it differently. In Tobago, a wake is a night
ceremony held when someone has died.
Relatives and friends of the deceased
stay “awake” all night to honour the dead.
Christian hymns are sung and feasting (a
significant African-derived custom) is an
important element of the event. The bongo
comes after the deceased is buried. It
leans more heavily on the African beliefs.
For example, participants believe that life
and death are very closely knitted and
the bong is a way to ease the deceased’s
rite of passage to the other side. It is also
intended to liven up the ‘dead’ house by
encouraging grieving relatives to enjoy
life. Vulgar songs and dances intended
cause laughter and to stimulate sexual
arousal characterise the bongo—the
purpose is to usher in new life by exciting
participants to intercourse, which should
lead to birth.
Tobago Fest is a mid-September, mini-
Carnival masquerade, where you can
enjoy many elements of what you may
have missed in Trinidad earlier in the year.
Bands from both islands crowd the streets
for “night mas,” calypso shows and the
sound of sweet steel pan. Tobago has
its own version of “ole mas” (traditional
mas characters) including speech bands,
who wander from house to house with
gossip, songs and jokes, often done in
embellished European accents.
The Tobago Blue Food Festival
The Tobago Blue Food Festival is
another important Tobago attraction if
you’re hankering for more local flavour
to tickle your taste buds. It’s held around
October every year. For Tobagonians and
Trinis, “blue food” can mean any starchy,
edible root crop used in local cuisine—
cassava, yam and plantain (not a root)
included. But the term was specifically
derived from use of the tuber of the taro
plant, or dasheen as it’s locally called.
When boiled, this good-for-you source of
complex carbohydrates develops a blue
colour depending on the variety; hence
the idiom “blue food.” The Blue Food
Festival is an opportunity for local chefs
and cooks to earn bragging rights on their
innovative preparation of the dasheen
with stewed meats, in desserts or by
itself. Prizes are awarded to most original
dish, most innovative dish and to the
participant with the most dishes, among
other categories.
The event is traditionally held at the
Bloody Bay Recreational Grounds and
hosted by the village councils of L’anse
Fourmi, Bloody Bay and Parlatuvier
along with the Department of Tourism in
the Tobago House of Assembly. In 2009,
organisers revamped the layout of the
festival so that the rainforest provided
the perfect theatrical backdrop to the
day’s open-air activities, which included
musical performances from Black Stalin
and Shurwayne Winchester. And when it
came to food, the Tobago Hospitality and
Tourism Institute wowed attendees with
dasheen ice cream, served in an empty
coconut shell and delicious dasheen
coladas. Who knows what blue food treats
await in 2010
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The Ins & Outs of Trinidad and Tobago