This pan-Caribbean festival was founded in Guyana in 1972, so for its tenth incarnation and 35th anniversary, Carifesta came back to Guyana. The entire week is an orgy of culture, art, and literature, and for the first time EVER, everyone is confused about which events to go to, because there is A LOT TO DO. In Guyana. Can you believe it?
All the participating countries have come with delegations for dance, literature, theater, visual arts, tourism, trade, etc., and every day there are plays, country presentations, dances, symposia, book fairs--you name it, they've got it.
Because we're running around participating the hell out of Carifesta, I've going to post, pending a more cohesive report, ten random moments of the Carifesta X experience so far.
NUMBER 1: Brazil invades Guyanese air space The papers said that the skywriting show was to be on Saturday, but despite Mariel showing up (with new volunteer Jane Quinn, formerly with the BBC, in tow), it turns out that the whole thing was scheduled for Sunday. This being a country whose Air Defense force is amazingly small, you can guess what kind of applause met the Brazilian Smoke Squadron as they swooshed, swooped, and smoked over the seawall. I snapped as many pictures as I could from our slightly disadvantaged post at the National Stadium, but I got a few good shots, enough to pique the curiousity of a Muslim woman from Berbice, who came up to ask to see my photos. I wish I'd taken a photo of her instead: she looked a little confused when she asked me where our group of VSOs were all from, and I said Philippines, United States, Scotland, England, and Sweden.
Number 2: Religious Conversions At the India booth at the book fair, Sheena was just finished telling the lady that she had a friend who was interested in Hinduism and Gandhi when I showed up with Cookee. "There she is!" said Sheena, and the lady, impressed by Cookee's interest in their religion, told us that while the books on display were not for sale, she was going to give the Gandhi book to Cookee because she was "so passionate about learning about Hinduism." Thirty minutes after that, Cookee walked over to the Central Islamic Organization of Guyana booth, and got a copy of the translated Qu'Ran. Tsk-tsk.
Number 3: The Filipinos Will Save the World The people at Hansib Publications were trying to get me to buy a copy of Meenachi, by Trinidad poet Rajandaye Ramkissoon Chen, using as leverage the fact that the poet herself was standing right next to me. I had to plead poverty, having just spent my money on Guyana and Moving Voices, as well as a Black Identity for Cookee. "You don't read poetry?" Mrs. Chen asked with a touch of disgust.
In the meantime, her husband came over to join the conversation. "Where are you from?" he asked kindly. "Never mind, she doesn't read poetry," said Mrs. Chen.
I pulled out Moving Voices from my bag, and explained that while I prefer reading poetry, I was curious about performance poetry in this side of the world, and so had bought the book because it came with a CD of performances. Mr. Chen asked me where I was from, and I said I was from the Philippines. "The Filipinos will save the world!" he suddenly exclaimed. At this I began to inch away. "No, listen, really. The Filipinos are the best people in the world, and they must show everyone else the way!"
As it turns out, Mr. and Mrs. Chen were both Opus Dei, friends of Fr. De Torre of the University of Asia and the Pacific, and had in fact visited Ortigas twice. We had a long conversation about jeepneys, about the role of media in transforming society, about Ortigas Center, CRC and UA&P, and about Filipino doctors in Trinidad. The Chens believe that the Philippines, being the hotbed of secret Opus Dei activity that it is, should serve as a religious example to the rest of the world.
God, in His mercy, allowed me to keep a sensible mind and a quiet tongue on the matter.
Number 4: Karen King Aribisala We were all astonished at her poetry reading, but no one seemed to have been able to catch her name. We asked everyone: the speaker who came after her, the host of the book launch, the publishers at the book stalls. Finally, Cookee sighed, marched up to the poet, and told her, "We really enjoyed your performance. What's your name?"
Karen King Aribisala is a Guyanese-born short story writer, essayist and poet who is now living and working in Nigeria. Her first collection of short stories, Our Wife and Other Stories, won the Best First Book Prize in the Commonwealth Prize (African Region) 1990/91. Her second work, Kicking Tongues, is a blending of poetry and prose, in which she transposes Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales to modern-day Nigeria. She is the recipient of a number of awards such as two James Mitchner Fellowships for creative writing at the University of Miami, a Ford Foundation Grant and British Council grants.
Ms. Aribisala read again at the Umana Yana last Monday, which we missed, but we will try and see her reading on Friday.
Number 5: Ay, Guyana We did our Monday work quickly, hoping to have lunch and then perhaps play a little hooky to catch the symposium by Nobel Prize-winning poet Derek Walcott at the Castellani House.
It was, however, a very hot day in South America, and Cookee wanted to have lunch somewhere airconditioned. We hunted down--after a series of mishaps and a long walk in the punishing noontime sun--German's Restaurant, a high-ceilinged, rather nicely decorated restaurant that was located, for unfathomable reasons, right at the borders of the notorious Tiger Bay block. The airconditioning was very good, and the prices reassuringly high.
BUT one look at the menu told us that, despite being called German's, and despite its nice interiors and high prices, the food was little more than good snackette food. Meaning: beef curry, chicken curry, puri, macaroni. Well, they had split pea soup with beef tendon. The vein in Cookee's head started to throb. "Ay, Guyana," she said. "Why don't people like variety here?" She was going to yell this last comment from the top of the lunch counter, but I was able to calm her down (barely) with a glass of Coca Cola with lots of ice.
Number 6: Nobel Prize Winner in the house! This slight lunch delay meant that we got to Castellani House a little before 3pm...and just as Derek Walcott's talk had finished fielding the last questions. I would have wanted to have been there, especially since the discussions turned towards the use of native languages in literature, a topic I'm very interested in.
Cookee was able to snap a couple of blurry shots of Mr. Walcott before he went away. That's all I have to show for being in the same room as a Nobel Prize winner. Sigh.
Number 7: "I'm with the performers." Wednesday night, me, Cookee, Kristan, and the newly returned Angela went to the Georgetown City Hall for "A Night of Caribbean Folk Dancing," which featured performances from Brazil, Suriname, Bahamas, Dominican Republic, and French Guiana. Unfortunately, it looked like a great many people had the same idea, and when we got there, we were among the dozens of people who were turned away at the door, being told that there was simply no more room in the performance hall.
I would've been happy to hang around the courtyard a bit, take a few pictures of the nicely lit City Hall, and then go home. But Cookee instead went up to the guard, said, "I'm a participant," and was promptly sent to the dressing room, where, the guard informed her, the Suriname contingent were already dressed.
This is what Cookee was wearing:
And this is what the dancers--presumably the ones from Suriname--were wearing:
And that's how we were able to get to experience A Night of Caribbean Folk Dancing.
Number 8: Somebody Likes Headdresses Buoyed by that incident, Cookee asked to borrow another headdress from a "fellow participant":
Number 9: I am bad at geography, but I am pretty sure I can tell Southeast Asia from South America and the Caribbean. We went to the Grand Market grounds in Sophia last Monday to go see the country presentations and see what kind of international food there was for us to enjoy and save us from the samey snackette food around here (see Number 5, above). There was food from Suriname, Anguilla, Barbados, Montserrat, Guyana...and Indonesia.
The best food and best value for money was from the Anguilla stall. "I don't even know where the country is, but their food is delicious!" said Vanessa Dunstan, back in Georgetown with her husband and fellow VSO Teddy Dunstan. I had a sort of casserole made of okra (better than it sounds!), spicy vegetable fried rice, and, from Suriname, a fruit cocktail of pineapples and watermelon in iced milk.
Guyana, unfortunately never known for culinary variety, featured food from the New Thriving Chinese restaurant. Not bad, but it says something when any country except China chooses a Chinese restaurant to represent its cooking.
Number 10: Stilt Walkers Want to See Your... The most exciting country presentation of the evening was from the British Virgin Islands, which featured stilt dancers dancing to soca music.
It was all very nice and exciting, until a lull in the action allowed me to focus on the music, and it became clear that the stiltwalkers were dancing to a song that demanded, "Show me your p*ssy...I want to see your p*ssy!"
(Presumably they don't mean Sherlock.)
More Carifesta updates as they come, but in the meantime, photos of our Carifesta X activities are in my Multiply album here.
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