Yey! I’ve experienced a Caribbean carnival! Was great to see: Lots of energy and music and dance and colour! Of course we took the opportunity to fundraise because there were lots of people in Kingstown during those days and lots of visitors, mostly relatives, coming over for the event. There was a lot of excitement a while before the event as it was hyped up in the media and everywhere. The carnival soca songs were playing on the radio for a while already. There were lots of different events around the country, not only in the city.
Events include the “jump-up’s”, where trucks with huge speakers parade with music blasting as loud as possible and people dancing through the streets (in costume or not), the “J’Ouvert”, where there’s dancing through the streets and throwing of paints and water so that everyone is covered in colours, and of course the beauty contests. I did not get to see the jouvert (or jouve/juuvay…) because it takes place in the very early morning (like 3am) until after sunrise, but I saw the costume parades and other parades which were during the day.
It was a bit difficult to fundraise during the peak time though as it was crowded and loud (a good loud of energizing soca music!). We were mostly selling raffle tickets – I mentioned before that we were arranging a raffle, well we finally did it and have printed out loads of tickets to sell and try to fundraise in that way. We had to invest in the first prize (a laptop we got on discount) but the rest of the prizes were donated to us by very generous businesses, including a round-trip to one of the islands in the grenadines. The sales are going good, but it stills takes a long time to get around to cover as many areas as possible, but it’s fun to do and to give people a chance to get something in return for their donation, although a few people still prefer to donate the usual way rather than participating in the raffle because of religious reasons, which we respect of course and we still welcome the usual donations.
It’s been a really good experience to arrange this raffle. Simona and I were busy for a while getting the donations for the prizes, then it was a matter of setting the price of the ticket, designing and printing the tickets. Then the whole team has been busy selling them and we just have to coordinate the areas we’re selling. It’s the last fundraising activity we’re doing and we should be done in about a week. Then we will finish off our specialization tasks and prepare to depart in the next month.
Hopefully I will have good news for you the next time I write – finally reaching the fundraising target! Can’t wait…then I can stop bothering you guys about donations (although they are always welcome of course as I will still be volunteering for the next 9 months!). I hope I will continue to have such super local support - over here it has been just super! Everyone is so supportive, businesses as well as individuals. Like the other day we were invited on a radio program to help promote our school and the volunteer program – Simona and I were on the radio! And we met the host just the beginning of last week. That’s how nice people are here. It’s a small independent radio station and we had about 10 minutes on air but that’s good enough for us. A few of us have also been on the public radio station, on television and in one of the newspapers. It’s great and it works coz it’s a small place and word gets around quickly ;)
Take care all and ’till next time…
