Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Though rains pelt­ed from the skies and spec­ta­tors ran for shel­ter, hun­dreds of chil­dren fol­lowed Machel Mon­tano's in­struc­tion and par­tied 'Like a boss' dur­ing the an­nu­al San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion Kid­dies Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions yes­ter­day.

The pa­rade be­gan un­der bril­liant sun­shine at Mon Re­pos, where 15 bands gath­ered to par­tic­i­pate in the school and non-school cat­e­gories. How­ev­er, by noon when the first band Ec­cles Vil­lage An­gli­can School crossed the stage at Skin­ner Park with its por­tray­al of Myths and Mys­ter­ies, the weath­er changed.The El Do­ra­do gold sec­tion as well as the Uni­corns, who wore pink, yel­low and gold, were drenched.

Li­onel Jages­sar's large band ar­rived at the judg­ing point half an hour lat­er with a por­tray­al of the Iro­quois, Sarato­ga, Onei­da, Tus­carona, Onanda­ga and South­ern Wood­land tribes which live along the Mo­hawk Riv­er. They were fol­lowed by the House of Jacqui's pre­sen­ta­tion of Dis is Mas.Sim­i­lar to oth­er por­tray­als, this band fo­cused on all the as­pects of T&T's cul­ture, in­clud­ing its cos­mopoli­tan peo­ple, sports and mu­sic.

Vanes­sa West's cos­tume, ti­tled " Ganges Meets the Nile," and Ri­car­do Al­bert's por­tray­al of "T&T the Land of Oil and Mu­sic" wowed the spec­ta­tors.The Ba­hai Girls, Ras Mas and Flag Par­ty sec­tions, as well as the So­ca War­riors crew en­joyed their jump up on the stage, which be­came flood­ed with colour and wav­ing flags.

But as this band left, winds and rains again be­gan pound­ing the stage, caus­ing tech­ni­cal crews to hur­ried­ly cov­er their equip­ment with tar­pau­lin. How­ev­er, the mu­sic nev­er stopped and the fourth band, Yo Ho Ho and a Bar­rel of Rum, flowed freely with pi­rates wav­ing their shiny plas­tic ma­chetes in time with De­stra's Lucy.

The San Fer­nan­do Girls' An­gli­can came next and al­so par­tied in the rain do­ing a por­tray­al of T&T in its Splen­did Glo­ry. De­pict­ing the Span­ish, French, Chi­nese, African and East In­di­an in­flu­ence on T&T cul­ture, the stu­dents gave the spec­ta­tors a les­son in his­to­ry.At 2.30 pm, Taniz's Unique Gems ar­rived at the park, soaked but hap­py. Kalo­mi Mar­shall, who was dressed in a ge­nie cos­tume, vowed to grant wish­es. The five-sec­tion band por­trayed T&T's sweet mu­sic, sun­shine, wealth, di­ver­si­ty and cul­ture.

Co-or­di­na­tor Walid Baksh said the 2015 por­tray­als were of a high stan­dard com­pared to pre­vi­ous years."Mas mak­ers are in­vest­ing more in Car­ni­val so the cre­ativ­i­ty and stan­dards are very high. We are try­ing to im­prove the qual­i­ty of mas in San Fer­nan­do," Baksh said.How­ev­er, some pa­trons said the SFCC should have set up more dis­pos­able toi­lets for the chil­dren as well as cov­ered street seat­ing for spec­ta­tors.

"Peo­ple love to watch mas but the city needs to cater for this and pro­vide the nec­es­sary fa­cil­i­ties," one spec­ta­tor said.Some of the bands are ex­pect­ed to re­turn to the streets to­day and to­mor­row.