Mi-Careme

Just when you thought the Carnival was over...back it comes again! A couple of groups came out for a parade around the town, this time wearing black and red. The girls were very excited to see them again but this time it really is over - until Christmas when it all starts again!

In the meantime, we celebrated the bank holiday with an impromptu party at Pika. One of those pleasant occasions when you say in passing to someone "why don't we pop along to Pika...hey we could even have a BBQ...." and suddenly half the family and many friends have come along for a feast!

As ever, the men sorted the BBQ under Bertie's close supervision, the women prepared all the food, I spent my time pushing the girls on the swings and keeping JoJo out of mud and mess, our nephew's name was bellowed constantly as he got into everything, trod on everything and swung a machete left lying around...

Bertie headed off to his dry dry garden and managed to construct this dinky little cover from the coconut leaves he collected recently propped up with sticks from another plant.

JoJo was pleased to give him a hand in his endeavours
Our great discovery of the day was our cucumber. Here it was on the 12 March - can you see the wee thing?

And now here it is just one week later! We are looking forward to enjoying it very soon. Our friend also gave us a lesson in picking sweetcorn - get it when it is very pale yellow and it won't be hard and chewy like ours was! I took a bunch and found a massive caterpillar (or two or three) in each, so my new lesson is if it doesn't have a caterpillar it is probably too dry!

What The Girls Have Been Up To

And we thought the Carnival was over! The girls have had great fun dressing up with whatever they can find and marching round the house with their Carnival song (very realistic too) and barely a day goes by without it

This was last Thursday when we had a friend of LissaLou's over. After the Carnival, we went on to Activity Time and they had a great time making birthday cards for a cousin, puppets, daffodils, drawing...all with Mamie's new ducklings in the background! (We are looking forward to Duck a l'orange...)

Mardi Gras

You are all surely very familiar with the significance of Mardi Gras (fat Tuesday!) so I won't go into it all for you. However I will tell you about how it is celebrated here and I have stolen some of Evs' and Mum's photos as my camera, lovely as it is, just doesn't do night ones!

Regular readers of this blog will know that there have been carnival groups parading around the town mostly on Sunday evenings since Christmas as they prepare for the Real Deal during Carnival Week. Each Saturday a particular town or two welcomes all the groups from all over the island for a parade, however, this didn't happen this year due to the strike. Then on Mardi Gras the folk are supposed to go to Pointe a Pitre for a Big Parade which has all sorts of contests - best costumes etc - none of which happened, again due to the strike.

Instead we had a few of our local groups parade round late in the evening dressed up in amazing costumes - they had hats as big as their bodies! Must steal Mum's photo of them! We went and watched with our oh so very excited girls (who have got the carnival walk mastered down to a t!) and had a late night as a result. The funniest part was LissaLou has been very proud of her lack of fear in the face of the masks worn by one group (monkey or old hag ones) - in distinct contrast to her mum and sister! Not so tonight! The monkey came dancing up to her and she crept further and further back eventually hiding herself behind me! She was able to laugh it off afterwards.

Mardi Gras is celebrated in the UK with pancakes (Shrove Tuesday) so Bertie kindly made us some of his delicious ones. However, here they celebrate with beignets, which actually means doughnuts but as Bertie pointed out, they aren't really doughnuts as we know them (perhaps beignets pays...!). Here are a batch made by Mamie - they are much less sweet (I think the only sugar is what they are dipped in) and very tasty. We polished them off!Mardi Gras is of course followed by Mercredi des Cendres (Ash Wednesday) and the beginning of Careme (Lent). The Carnival period culminates on this day with some more parading that we and the girls enjoyed watching, but this time everyone is dressed in black and white, funeral colours here. Whose funeral, I hear you ask... it is in fact the funeral of poor old Vaval, the King of the Carnival; a Guy Fawkes type figure, he is carried in front of the parade and then taken off to be burnt somewhere. Until next year!
Only it isn't...for some reason Carnival manages to reappear again for one final day of parading called Mi-Careme which is in mid-March. Perhaps this day won't be affected by the strike.

As for Lent here, we are on a mainly Catholic island so it is taken very seriously by some, with no meat on Wednesdays and Fridays and no amusements (dancing etc) for the particularly dedicated. Interestingly, the evangelical community take no part in Lent whatsoever as they see it purely as a Catholic celebration, so the (Anglo Saxon perhaps) practice of given up chocolate crisps etc for the period is not found on the island. I think I have already given up enough during the strike so I don't think I will choose anything particularly this year!

Carnaval Sunday In Our Town...

...was cancelled due to the strike! So instead of having all the different groups from throughout the island parading around the town, we just had six local groups doing what is called a vide. All the people in the town came out to their gates to enjoy the event.

It was fun to watch, especially as the masks weren't in evidence this week. We even got a special viewing as two groups stopped in front of our house and performed for a while, before coming and asking Mamie to fill up their water bottles!

They always seems to parade around in the evening and I haven't successfully got any photos in the dark yet, so I was pleased to see them pass the house on the way to the meeting point whilst the sun was still out.Some of the instruments they have are small, big and massive drums, tambourine-like things, trumpets, conch shells (which just play one note!) and shakers made out of a fruit called calebasse. The children always march in the front, followed by the dancing ladies and then the (usually male) musicians.

The groups are always followed by a group of youngsters on bikes and motorbikes, then come all the cars stuck behind them.Baby JoJo claps along with the beat

This neighbour walks in the lead to warn traffic to make way"I love the carnival!" LissaLou told me

Birthday Time

There can't be any months without birthdays in this family, but January and September seem to be particularly full. Today we celebrated the second of six (I think!) with Bertie's niece reaching 14. We enjoyed some snacks, a very impressive cake, champagne, truffles...LissaLou managed to get through three glasses of fizzy stuff without me noticing and her tummy was popping out! She almost had to turn down her cake but found room for it after all! Here are some highlights with the birthday girl blowing out her candles in the middle.A rare photo of the photographer! The two girls in the middle are the neighbours with whom LissaLou and her cousin spend as much time as they are allowed! Very sweet girls who are very hospitable to our two girls when they go round, it was nice to see them at the party.

Aha, the cake!

As ever, well at least on Sunday nights during Carnival season, a practising band came marching past and we all crowded on to the street to take a look. Now it is getting more serious and they were out in their masks especially for the occasion. Terrifying! I made the mistake of taking CassCass too close and a few masks came right up to us - you can imagine the result! We shall stay at a safe distance in the future! No such problem for LissaLou, who has been running around with a tissue on her face givin bloodcurdling shrieks ever since!