Car­ol Quash

De­spite the glob­al eco­nom­ic cri­sis, gua­va sea­son, or what­ev­er oth­er ad­jec­tives are used to de­scribe tight fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tions, Trin­bagnon­i­ans al­ways seem to find the means and time to sup­port wor­thy caus­es.And it was no ex­cep­tion at this year's Han­nah Janoura Christ­mas Bazaar held at the Hilton Trinidad and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre on Oc­to­ber 23.Ac­cord­ing to a phil­an­thropic Janoura, who has been host­ing the event for more than two decades, her pro­ceeds from the bazaar go to­ward the pur­chas­ing of wheel­chairs for chil­dren at the Princess Eliz­a­beth Home and the La­dy Ho­choy Home.

The an­nu­al bazaar is usu­al­ly one of the first events to kick of the Christ­mas sea­son, and from 10 am to 5.30 pm, hun­dreds of pa­trons, adults and chil­dren alike, vis­it­ed more than 80 booths lo­cat­ed in the ho­tel's fes­tive ball­room. With the carparks un­able to ac­com­mo­date the ve­hi­cles of all of the steady stream of sup­port­ers, some were forced to park along the sides of the La­dy Young Road in the vicin­i­ty of the ho­tel.

In the lim­it­ed brows­ing space, pa­trons were able to get a head start on their Christ­mas shop­ping, with the wide va­ri­ety of af­ford­able items and ser­vices on sale-clothes, ac­ces­sories, Christ­mas dec­o­ra­tions, toys, food, arts and crafts, you name it.The sweet back­ground Yule­tide mu­sic was in­ter­mit­tent­ly in­ter­rupt­ed by the voice of Janoura over the PA sys­tem, an­nounc­ing fur­ther dis­counts by some gen­er­ous ven­dors. It was no sur­prise to see some shop­pers, like ants, cart­ing away bags dou­ble their weight.

But it was not all about shop­ping. There were fun ac­tiv­i­ties for the chil­dren, in­clud­ing face paint­ing.How­ev­er, the high­light of the day was the ar­rival of San­ta Claus, who this year was ac­com­pa­nied by Mrs Claus for the first time.At around 2 pm, amid the clang­ing of bells the Claus­es, led by Janoura made their way through the ball­room fol­lowed by a trail of scream­ing chil­dren, with some just as ex­cit­ed par­ents in tow.But not all the young ones took a lik­ing to Old Saint Nick and the wife. As the cou­ple stopped to shake the hands of adults and kiss ba­bies and tod­dlers, there were shrieks-some in­voked by joy and oth­ers by ut­ter fear.

Af­ter their trek through the ball­room, the Claus­es and a seem­ing­ly tire­less Janoura, still be­ing trailed by a stream of scream­ing chil­dren, made their way to the Sa­van­nah Ter­race, where they dis­trib­uted hun­dreds of toys to the anx­ious kids.