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FETE FUN
LE CARNAVAL!
Add extra joie de vivre to your fete this season
by playing mas in Martinique, Guadeloupe and
Saint Martin. Sarah Wood gives the lowdown
on Carnival, French Caribbean style
Carnival
2020 dates
ALL OF THE FRENCH
CARNIVALS PEAK AROUND
23-26 FEBRUARY; PARADES
AND PAGEANTS BEGIN
IN JANUARY AND RUN
INTO MARCH
Nothing can prepare a firsttimer
for Carnival in the
French Caribbean.
After I arrived in
Guadeloupe, my taxi driver Laurent
urged me to sleep for 72 hours
beforehand. François recommended
stamina-boosting vitamins as he
handed me a crêpe in the L’îlet Douceur
café. Further advice was doled out from
every quarter: I was offered dancing
tips, warned against a raging thirst
and other heat-related ailments, told
to prepare for melon-sized blisters,
scolded for my costume choice (far
too modest) and told a zillion times
that “at Carnival time, anything goes”. A
Carnival veteran friend expressed real
concern that I’d not upped my cardio
work beforehand: “You’ll be gasping
for air, weak legged, fried to a crisp
and hallucinating,” she told me. “It is
super-intense. Like running a marathon
in spike heels in summer, only with neat
rum to rehydrate.”
All of these things came to
pass. For the entire week I spent in
Guadeloupe at Carnival time, I barely
slept, instead summoning Herculean
levels of energy to dance the streets
from morning to night. Back and forth I
swayed to the syncopated pounding of
snare drums. I was twirled by strangers
wearing little more than a feather or
two. I was showered in a rainbow of
confetti as the music morphed from
acoustic to soca. A troupe of oiled-up
dudes in lurex span me around in a
blur. I got tangled in a near-naked
conga and I gasped for breath as the
air filled with glitter dust and sparkles.
My toes wept, my calf muscles burned,
the zillion-watt pulse of a boomboom-boom
bassline supercharged my
chest, and my tendons tightened to
snapping point in my vertigo-inducing
heels. I’d never wiggled or jiggled so
much in my life: every inch of my
body was in constant movement, from
my ankles to the tip of my head. But
the undulating bodies all around me
showed no sign of flagging.
At one point I stopped to survey
the spectacle: it was a glorious collision
of unashamed sexiness and family
entertainment. Several bystanders were
weeping tears of joy. I, too, felt a bubble
of emotion, so with arms outstretched
I sounded my whistle, clicked my heels
and pirouetted with a smile as broad as
an over-stretched hammock. Physically,
I was high on the collective exuberance
of Guadeloupe’s crowds: the joyful
chants, the vibrant costumes and the
hip-shimmying exhilaration. Spiritually,
I felt empowered, as if fuelled by
Guadeloupe’s phenomenal life-force.
That’s why, while shaking my booty in a
froth of neon-pink feathers, I promised
myself I’d do it all again…
“You’ll be gasping for air, weak legged, fried to a crisp, hallucinating. Carnival here is super-
52 | ZiNG CARIBBEAN www.liat.com | January - February 2020