Soyini Grey
soyini.grey@guardian.co.tt
Carnival for the Cause is the brainchild of Lisa Farrer: a Carnival-loving cancer survivor who wants to share the healing power of mas and soca with others.
The project will provide costumes for Memorial Day Carnival in Orlando for students of the University of Central Florida (UCF). When she was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer in December 2022, it devastated her. Her doctors wanted to begin treatment as quickly as possible, but that meant that she would have to miss Trinidad Carnival. It was almost too much for her to bear. Farrer said she broke down, surrounded by her oncologist and other medical specialists, because she would have to cancel her plans. She would have to sell her cabin on the Epic Carnival Cruise that docked in Port-of-Spain last year as a floating hotel for Carnival and her costume in Lost Tribe’s section The Washing to begin cancer treatment on January 9.
“I bawled down the place like a child,” she said. “Snot running down my nose.”
Ever the pragmatic person, she sat in that very office, googled Caribbean Carnivals and settled on St Kitts, because it would take place before she was required to begin treatment. Her doctors approved her for travel and the stars aligned. She was able to secure a flight, a hotel and, most importantly, a costume for a most surreal, but ultimately necessary Carnival experience to ring in the New Year.
“It was bitter-sweet,” she said. There was the very real scenario that it could have been her last ever “jump up”. But she embraced the experience. “I went from being despondent, stressed out to being recharged.”
Researchers have confirmed that music and dance therapy can help cancer patients respond more favourably to treatment. Soca helped Farrer survive the rigours of radiation and chemotherapy. Her song of choice was Faye-Ann Lyons-Alverez’s 2023 release The Stage Is Your Name and 2015 Raze. On Farrer’s Instagram page, she uploaded a photo of her with the soca star from the Uber Soca cruise last November. Her caption explains how dancing to soca facilitated her healing.
Farrer is a body-positive Carnival influencer. Her bare chest is all over her social media accounts in costume, at the beach. She’s even shared a photo of her scars before she had healed properly. The fact that she has undergone a double mastectomy is no secret. Guided by her philosophy not to share past the point of healing, she admits that despite how it looks it was not an easy decision.
“At first it was extremely hard because I grew up in a culture that women are very sexualised,” Farrer who grew up in Barataria said. “How would you know that I am a woman without my breasts?” But with time she was able to look at herself in the mirror without becoming upset and that’s when she knew that she was ready to share more.
Sharing her bare chest as a survivor was personally significant because as a recently diagnosed person, Farrer had struggled to find information about Black women’s experience with mastectomies.
Also, at a Carnival last year, she had an encounter on the road with a supporter who leaned in to whisper that he too was a cancer survivor but had kept his diagnosis secret. She wondered why, because as a survivor she saw him as an inspiration.
That encounter and the deadly breast cancer statistics in the United States for African American women persuaded her to be open with her journey. As a Trinidadian, she was also very concerned by the high mortality rates for women here and realised that telling her story may be helpful.
Breast cancer is one of the leading causes of mortality in Caribbean women. A 2021 study published in Cureus by Samaroo et al, also found that Caribbean women die at higher rates from breast cancer than their North American or European counterparts despite having significantly lower incident rates. Poor screening means that these women are being diagnosed at later stages which in turn hurts their recovery increasing their mortality.
Farrer said she had also noticed a pattern of younger women being diagnosed, which to her meant that she needed to do what she could to raise awareness about prevention and treatment. As a burgeoning Carnival influencer, she felt that her target audience needed to share in her journey, with the hope that it may offer life-saving information.
This year Farrer will turn 50. As part of her plans, she is giving back. She is working to provide the UCF Caribbean Students Association with materials to create at least 20 costumes they could wear at Orlando Carnival on Memorial Day weekend, May 24-27. The students will also design and build their costumes for the parade and Farrer hopes to be there with them to assist them with construction.
The project is also being supported by the American Carnival influencer Tracy Lyons-White who runs the account AWM Carnival on Instagram and TikTok, as a co-sponsor. As a physician assistant and Carnival lover herself, Lyons-White said Carnival With a Cause “matters because not only does it support breast cancer awareness, but it also supports the birth of future creatives/designers.”
Farrer said her experience taught her about the importance of awareness. Through Carnival, she was able to cope with the rigours of treatment, today she is determined to share information that could help her community adopt behaviours that would keep them safe while sharing her love of mas and soca.