Ladies, the de­bate is grow­ing abut which coun­try has the bet­ter par­ty

En­durance

Trinida­di­an women have said that Ba­jans trav­el to T&T for the par­ty. Af­ter talk­ing to sev­er­al Tri­ni women, it has been agreed that Ba­jans like the hos­pi­tal­i­ty, the kin­dred spir­it, the shop­ping, the food and most of all, the par­ty.

Every­one agrees on this one thing! Trinida­di­ans know how to set a nice, steady pace, ex­cept for traf­fic on the high­ways! Ba­jans ap­pre­ci­ate the slow, groovy, T&T tunes; the pace of Tri­ni par­ties that start easy and end up in full dri­ve hours and hours lat­er in­to the night (and of course the next morn­ing). Maybe it has to do with the larg­er land­mass of Trinidad and the longer dis­tances to trav­el but Tri­nis are more pa­tient with their par­ty­ing.

En­er­gy

There's some­thing in­tense about the Ba­jan pace though, and it's not to be tak­en for grant­ed. Ba­jans don't par­ty long.

Over the years what they have cul­ti­vat­ed is a cul­ture that can be con­sid­ered all-out par­ty­ing. The way they "jump" Kadoo­ment Day, and any fete for the Crop Over sea­son for that mat­ter, is force­ful! Ba­jans get out of the gates hard and the par­ty is high en­er­gy from the be­gin­ning to the end.

Ba­jans don't chip down the road. No, no, no. It's more like a stam­pede.

What is done on Kadoo­ment Day can­not be done for two full days and nights... that's the dif­fer­ence.

Ba­jans can­not par­ty non-stop, not the way they tram­ple the road­ways and mash up the floor­boards of venues.

Some­times Tri­nis have to tell the Ba­jan coun­ter­parts, ea­ger on their first Car­ni­val Mon­day, "pace yuh­self".

The Crop Over Fes­ti­val is a long sea­son that is punc­tu­at­ed by a se­ries of com­mu­ni­ty shows called Cal­val­cades. Then the pri­vate fetes be­gin. The Ca­lyp­so com­pe­ti­tions run through­out the nine weeks of ac­tiv­i­ties.

There is hard­ly a night when there isn't an event.

So what do Ba­jans do? They plan ear­ly and use tac­tics.

Know­ing full well that they will be go­ing hard, they nav­i­gate work, fam­i­ly and oth­er com­mit­ments and then par­ty all out and crash!

The se­cret is to stay away for a day or two and then par­ty all out at an­oth­er event.

Re­mem­ber that the Crop Over Fes­ti­val is a cel­e­bra­tion of the end of the long cane-har­vest­ing sea­son.

It marks the end of hard labour, strug­gle, ex­haus­tion and op­pres­sion. Crop Over is a time to break out in song, in art and craft, in cook­ing, in mu­sic and dance.

Crop Over is a length­ened point of ex­hil­a­ra­tion. It's quite like that sigh of re­lief when you've com­plet­ed a tough work­out.

So when you go to Bar­ba­dos, try to fo­cus on the ex­tend­ed sea­son of bing­ing, not on the time re­stric­tions on Kadoo­ment Day.

So we should go to Bar­ba­dos for one week, not a week­end. Usu­al­ly by the time Tri­nis are now ready to par­ty on Kadoo­ment day, the jump up is over.

Pure dis­ap­point­ment... but that's be­cause we weren't there for long enough to get in­to the Ba­jan rhythm. Plan an ex­tend­ed va­ca­tion and do the Crop Over Fes­ti­val like a Ba­jan.

Who sets the pace? We re­al­ly can­not judge un­til we have done both the right way! Tri­nis have en­durance and Ba­jans keep the en­er­gy high. The world of par­ty­ing needs both!

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