Loyse Vin­cent

Like al­most every­thing else, To­ba­go’s leg­endary Buc­coo events have been hard hit it by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. The lat­est to sched­uled event to feel be hit is the Sun­day School lime.

Quite op­po­site in mean­ing to the con­ven­tion­al con­cept of “Sun­day School,” the event is not re­li­gion-based.

Unique to To­ba­go, it is a street par­ty of sorts. Some­times, it is the on­ly event hap­pen­ing in To­ba­go on a Sun­day night and the last port of call for week­end limers.

Many Trinida­di­ans made a habit of go­ing to the event on Sun­day night, par­ty­ing un­til the wee hours of the morn­ing, then head­ing to the fer­ry to trav­el back to Trinidad.

The event re­cent­ly cel­e­brat­ed its 30th an­niver­sary but pa­trons could not cel­e­brate in the space be­cause of the pan­dem­ic’s Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance rules and reg­u­la­tions re­lat­ed to pub­lic gath­er­ings.

Ac­cord­ing to man­ag­er of the Buc­cooneers Steel Or­ches­tra Mervin Solomon, the or­gan­is­ers of the event are now look­ing at ways to re­vamp it.

He said they plan to in­clude more cul­tur­al per­for­mances and pro­vide a big­ger plat­form for lo­cal crafts­men and ser­vice providers.

“Apart from the bar sales crafts­men from all over the is­land, food ven­dors and a lot of lo­cal per­form­ers, (ven­dors) who sold items at the event would have lost earn­ings when the pan­dem­ic hit,” Solomon told To­ba­go To­day.

He said the re­struc­tur­ing in­cludes cater­ing for a dif­fer­ent crowd, as the event’s usu­al pa­tro­n­is­ers—re­tirees; are not ex­pect­ed to re­turn.

“Post-pan­dem­ic, we may see the dy­nam­ics of the crowd change. I think less ma­ture peo­ple would at­tend, so we have to find a way to re­mind peo­ple that Buc­coo is still the place to be but al­ways with safe­ty in mind,” he said.

Pub­lic Re­la­tions Of­fi­cer (PRO) of the Buc­coo Vil­lage Coun­cil Win­ston Pereira said he too would like to see the Sun­day event and oth­ers in the vil­lage change. He said they should be­come “more or­gan­ised to gen­er­ate rev­enue and be­come a plat­form for cul­ture.”

Buc­coo is known for fish­ing and tourism, he said and be­fore the pan­dem­ic, the vil­lage coun­cil was dis­cussing ways to com­bine var­i­ous as­pects of the Buc­coo ex­pe­ri­ence as a tourism of­fer­ing, called the “Buc­coo Pass­port.”

“Buc­coo is a ma­jor pil­lar in the whole To­ba­go tourism prod­uct. Buc­coo is known for two flag­ship events, the East­er Goat Races and the Sun­day School and these events are or­gan­ic to To­ba­go,” Pereira said.

The PRO said the Buc­coo Pass­port con­cept is a way to fur­ther de­vel­op the Buc­coo brand.