Friday, February 25, 2011

Mashmarani Parade! - The ultimate endurance event.

Well MASH has come and gone. In the end it was an endurance event, a kind of a marathon with glitter. VSO along with other volunteer aide organizations put together a float to celebrate the international year of the volunteer. (Hats off to Thea who pulled around the clock shifts to get this happening) We other VSO’s were all lucky enough to get to participate in the biggest annual event in Guyana from the inside out.
Mash week started with rain, then more rain, then serious rain, and finally flooding. The day before the national holiday rumours start flying that MASH was about to be cancelled due to a partially flooded parade route (Really! I could not believe that with less than 24 hrs you could attempt to cancel a national public holiday, one in which folks travel from all over the country to attend, and which every work place will be closed and thousands of people have worked weeks to make costumes, floats etc)...Secret emergency meetings are held...and word leaks out that it’s official.. it’s off and an announcement from the govt. is imminent!....no wait...now its back on...or is it off....on, off, on..? As organizers are pulling their hair out and the text messages and phone calls fly..plans are changing by the minute... and then finally the culture minister announces to the country on radio and TV...that MASH is still ON! YAY! So of course that means that the costumes do need to get finished. Two weeks of fun, frantic, semi disorganized costume making in a cool old decrepit colonial building, (with a washroom that sported toads and bats!) and at 24hrs before show time the sewing machines were still going, the glitter was flying and a wee bit of designer drama was brewing. One last shift of costume making with the added complication of a now flooded entrance to the “mash camp”, as the costume making headquarters was called and a late night pizza and then home to get up bright and early for the big day.
The big day arrives and we needed to be at MASH headquarters to “uplift” our costumes by 8am...so an early start with my full household of guests as we headed out on what turned out to be bright and beautiful sunny day.....flooding, shmooding! While waiting for the mini bus and witnessing the hundreds of vendors start to claim spaces along the parade route to set up bars, food stalls and their massive towers of speakers, we see our local goat herder come down the road with his dear flock of 100 or so goats and kids and his little red flag that purportedly clears their way through the traffic....so funny and so Guyana. We arrive at Mash camp and the flood waters have retreated, a good sign. Hundreds of volunteers are all trying to fit into the bright orange shorts, head pieces, are cutting and self painting their shirts and soon the room is a sea of orange and gold attire....it is great fun getting dressed and painting each other with glitter and trying to find a pair of shorts that are not too big or too small. We eventually are all dressed in our finery and head off to our place as nearly first in parade ten blocks away....and then we wait, and wait and wait some more...Finally we are marshalled to begin with strict orders from our designer/choreographer to stay in three lines (there are about 200 of us...so this seems like a challenge, but in fact is quite strictly enforced until the gruelling end). We look great...the overall effect of a sea of gold and orange is achieved and we are encouraged to wave, dance, whine and do a side to side step dance (but any movement other than walking made my shorts fall down, so improvisation was required to keep them up). Of course the sun is now very hot, and paper head bands, sweat and glitter make a fiercely sticky and challenging combination. The parade itself is a blast despite it’s epic length and the overall heat, some drop out due to heat exhaustion, others to sun burn and some just plain fainted. I hung in there for EFI (every f-ing inch)despite getting beaned in the head by a flying flagpole. We were kept well hydrated in our march lines with drinks, pine tarts and juice provided for the duration. The audience is awesome, all kinds of familes with tarps and bbqs set up, kids with their hairs respendent with decor and a highly festive mood....we whiteys get a few good laughs...and everyone takes your picture!
at times we had to wait...then wait...then oh let’s wait again...for media, interviews, the judges, for other floats to catch up...and well for just plain waiting it seemed. The waiting was hard,....as there was no shade and man large vinyl neck and cod pieces are heavy and hot as hell to wear especially over top of a too large cotton tshirt and tight in the thigh but loose in the waist nylon orange short that simultaneously felt like they would fall off or split at any moment. Finally three hours later we make it up to the national park to the stadium where we wait outside like a team of gladiators entering an arena to meet the lions...finally the emperor deems it is time for us and in an Olympic like entry we are announced into the stadium and instructed to run and dance...this after three hours of marching and baking in the sun. Well we had no choice, this was the big judging time...and I’m telling you running, staying in your line and keeping your shorts up all at the same time is hard. They played our theme song...again, then again, and oh hell why not let’s play it again. Nearly four laps later we are still running around the stadium while they talked about volunteers and our representation of Athens and Greece (is that our costumes were supposed to be?) we then head to the exit and at the last minute the beautiful Christina from Canada is pulled from the line and asked to be the queen pulling the cart for the last stretch...and then out of the stadium we went and collapsed on the grass.. Whew we did it...I felt like I had completed a triathlon...The parade incidentally goes to nearly 8pm at night, so we were rather thankful of our ranking at the front of the line..Some revellers then march for 7-10 hours!!! We got off easy with a completion time of 3pm.
7 of us ended up back at my nearby flat to strip out of our now seriously compromised costumes, shower, ice our broiled skin and basically try to de-glitter. My flat will never be the same...2 days and several serious clean ups later there is still glitter on everything and even the varnish on the wooden floor seems to be embedded with the stuff and I won’t even discuss the state of the shower....Eventually we were recovered enough that is was deemed time to head out for the street party!
What a night we had...in the end we did have some collateral damage, a pick pocketing, a mob we got caught in, lost glasses, shoes broken, a stolen bike, a poor choice of a midnight snack that made us all sick and quite a few very bad sunburns, ...and it was still such a good time....dancing, singing, saying happy mash to all you meet, feeling the festive vibe and we finally held our mini-wake and lime for our buddy Kane and his mom at his favourite haunt Seeta’s... It was incredible to participate in my first and likely my last ever MASH...Good thing I like glitter as I still seem to have some in every major orifice.

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

SOCA - MASH!

Mashramani or “MASH” as it is called here is an official national holiday in February to celebrate Guyana’s 1970 independence. The event cumulates in a carnival like parade and masquerade with a day off work for the whole country on Feb 23rd. But why wait until the end of February when you can start the party now ...why indeed...? So “MASH” fever is in the air here and many special events including cooking, theatre, and concerts are all to be held this month....Yay!

Conveniently located a few blocks from me, huge outdoor live MASH concerts will take place every weekend this month (well not convenient if you want to sleep I suppose) but who wants to sleep when you can dance? So of course we had to check it out. Having been to several concerts before in Guyana I know to expect, and was trying to remember the overwhelm I felt at the first crazy Chutney concert way back in August and realize I am now quite used to how large events are done here...and upon reflection we have a lot we could learn about concert production in North America from our Guyana friends...

Ticket Prices...$1000 GYD $5 bucks at the door!...well it was a gate...ok a bus window with cattle fencing...but still it was $5 bucks...( 5 bucks!!)...yep read that and feel very bad Live Nation Concerts....Yes I’m talking to you!! If a 3rd world country can put on huge successful outdoor concerts for three thousand plus people at 5 bucks a head...maybe you can do it for even lets say $50 a head instead of the $150 you regularly gouge music lovers for....huh?....yep nothing to say – I thought so.

Drinks...They haven’t heard of the drink only in this designated enclosed spot style “beer garden” concept down here....and wouldn’t consider anything with those kind of preposterous regulations. Instead it is a free for all with few if any rules that I can see, although bottle return is somewhat encouraged. You are free to either bring your own drinks (and some folks bring whole coolers full... an alcoholic picnic anyone?)...or buy drinks (for very cheap) including whole bottles of rum and vodka, and the promoters also contracts with local bars to set up booths around the perimeter of the massive dance floor so you can do almost do a pub crawl if you will within the show....fun times ensue with this lapse attitude towards drinking... and of course your dancing around empty bottle skills will also improve.

Food...When was the last time you had duck or goat curry at a music event, or fried fish and plantain chips for that matter ...probably never right?...But wow it is the most amazing midnight snack ever....hot curry in roti....yum. Popcorn and $9 hot dogs are no contest for fresh hot homemade midnight dance munchies.

Whining...Whining is the Trinidadian/Guyanese way of dancing and for those who don’t know it is best described as dry sex on the dance floor. The woman sticks out her booty and the gentlemen partner (or two) comes from behind and places one or two hands on her hips and together they rhythmically dance and grind like they were having a great sexy time, or making a hot porno...and at times...ok often ... there is NOTHING much left to the imagination and the activity even can progress to other more obvious positions. This style of dancing can be kind of a shock for the uninitiated...but the eroticness fits with the highly sexualized culture and the soca dance tunes ...and with the right guy..it’s tons of sexy fun, with the wrong guy...well you might just have to leave.

Concert Times...Here in Guyana at concerts bigger is better, louder is better so of course longer is also better. And really if you are going to set up speakers and amplifiers and hire DJ’s and bring in all those drinks and goats...well why shut down at 11? Why not at 3...or 4 or 5!!....or (what an amazing concept) when everyone is pretty much done.

Entrepreneurs...Supporting the local economy is intrinsic to events here...Well I think it just happens that local entrepreneurs will set up outside big events with their wares and are not discouraged by promoters...So unlike our concerts where all you can buy is licensed sanctioned products for hefty fees and $10 bags of popcorn...Here outside the gates of most concerts you can buy cd’s, corn on the cob (with gravy!), get a taxi from the hundreds waiting, buy a cold drinks, candy, jewellery, have your picture taken while you are all dressed up, etc. Etc....It’s all adds to the spectacle.

So I send a big welcome to MASH and a month of very loud Soca, Chutney and Reggae music, terrible egotistic DJ’s, tacky contests, cheap drinks, goat curry, ripped jeans so tight they defy gravity, frenetic dancing on a massive outdoor stage with 3000 thousand of your closet friends under a star filled sky where even the fire flies seem to dance.