12 August Jab jab Carnival

It's the Glorious 12th.  The first day of the grouse season in the UK.

However,that's UK.  This is Grenada's glorious 12th and it's carnival time! Today is Monday and we have a couple of days of parades. This morning's parade began before dawn. Sometimes it's called Jab Jab and sometime J'ouvert, as in 'I open'.

In Jab Jab participants are celebrating the emancipation from slavery and traditionally wear chains, hats with horns (like the devil?) and cover each other with old car oil and paints. If you go to watch old clothes are a must.

At 5.30am Jackster began to vibrate to the heavy bass of the sound system on an approaching truck. By 6am the parade was coming down the hill towards the entrance to the marina and we could hear the murmur of singing and horns sounding. I got up to go and watch while David stayed home and saved his hearing.

My first impression was a seething mass of people. The music was deafening and the bass so booming I could feel it. I didn't go outside the entrance gates, I don't think I could there was such a press of bodies. Anyway I didn't want an oil bath.

The music truck was stopped, unable to move forward. People were dancing, drinking, carrying an array of household items, presumably symbolic though I was struggling to connect a garden strimmer, a doll, a supermarket trolley (yes, really), machetes, suitcases and a improvised aerosol flame thrower.

It is a unique spectacle and people have come from across the islands to join the party. I left after twenty minutes having assaulted my ear drums and walked back to the main marina gate where there was a soap and hose down station in operation to wash off any oils and paints. I thought I was clean, but no, a dirty mark on the back of an arm had to cleaned.

The parade moved slower than an aged snail around the lagoon; four hours to travel half a mile and all the time the boats were a shakin'.

At 2.30pm it was the turn of the children's parade with colourful floats, a steel band and the kiddies dressed in what they hoped were prize winning outfits. This parade finished at 9pm. Finally quiet so we could sleep.

NO! No sleep for us when the after hours party kicked off at midnight on the road closest to us; less than 200m away a truck with the biggest sound system, the hardest bass boomers parked and stayed for three hours! I'm old. It wasn't music as I know it, more a disharmonious cacophony of noise. This time our companionway door was being rattled in the frame and our lampshades inside were 'chattering'. My teeth were grinding and sleep was impossible. Welcome to the uncomfortable bit of Caribbean carnival.

security at marina entrance

music truck

strimmers aloft