Carnival Miracle

It's like a Christmas miracle, only different.

Have you heard of Carnival?  Do you have any idea what it's like?  Let me 'splain.  Ok, so I've experienced three Carnival seasons, but one was spelled Carnaval, so it's different.  None of the three have I actively participated in, so maybe my descriptions and views are skewed by my general innocence and/or prudish-ness.  

 My first season was in Portugal.  That's the one with the weird spelling, cuz, you know, it's written in Portuguese.  I was serving my LDS mission in northern Portugal.  It seemed mostly like a cute parade with Halloween costumes.  The end.  Maybe I missed the real fun, since I was busy proselyting and stuff.  Still, it wasn't anything so crazy it really seemed like it interfered with my life, unlike a friend of mine who served a mission in Brazil and had to spend two weeks inside his apartment in order to avoid all the rampant sinning.  Portugal was no biggie.

My second season was last year in Dominica.  We were already into the middle of the Carnival season before I realized what exactly was going on.  Wonderman and I could not figure out why there was such a constant stream of pounding music night after night (the downfall of living on the main road, close to the city center).  I don't remember how we figured it out.  I do remember cursing it nightly.  I also remember waking up one night in the middle of the night (well, around 3 am) to music louder than I had ever before imagined in my entire life.  The pounding bass was so loud I could literally feel it in my bones.  It was loud.  Wonderman had a test the next day.  He was not happy.  We got out of bed to see what was going on.  We saw a semi truck with the trailer stacked completely full with speakers, driving (read "creeping") down the road in front of our house.  There were also flashing lights to make it even harder to sleep through.  Following the truck of speakers was a crowd of people dancing (read "stumbling") behind.  Maybe their movement was such because of the speed (read: "lack of speed") of the truck.  Maybe it was because of the ungodly hour.  Maybe it was alcoholic impairment.  Maybe it was all of these things.  It looked lame.  After much grumbling, we returned to bed to toss and turn.  Thankfully, that was essentially the end of the season.

This year, I knew it was coming.  I was mentally preparing a while before it even began.  I was super nervous about dealing with the noise with an infant in the house.  During one of the nights of insanely loud music, we put Bean's crib in the closet space that is the only place in the house without windows, hoping to cut down on her noise disturbance.  She still woke up multiple times in the night.  I was not excited for what I knew was coming (apparently the early morning parade is called j'ouvert (juvé) , meaning: parade that ends at sunrise, which sounds kind of neat and definitely benign, but is really not, unless maybe it is if you're in it but it's not great from the outside).  I expected to just bring Bean from the closet to our bed and spend the night nursing, and then probably the next day nursing as we struggled to recover from the night before.  I miscalculated.  I thought the parade would be tonight/tomorrow morning.  Alas, it caught me by surprise last night/this morning.  I didn't put the baby in the closet.  I had laid Bean down just an hour before after her mid-night feeding when I heard the tell-tale pounding.  I closed all the windows and drapes (every little bit helps) in the house and then waited, essentially right at the foot of Bean's crib, knowing she would be waking up crying in just moments.  The speaker truck got closer and closer and the music got louder and louder.  Literally all the windows and doors in our house were rattling.  Bean stirred.  She curled up and threw her feet down.  The craziness passed, still more than audible for quite some time.  SHE SLEPT THROUGH IT.  Seriously?  The child that wakes up if Wonderman lets his belt buckle rattle at all when he's undressing as we go in to bed (have I told you how fun it is to share a room with an infant that goes to bed five or six hours before we do?) slept through that insanity?  Really?  How is this possible?  I have no idea.  But I am grateful.  I am also tired, since I spent so much time awake and on the alert, waiting for her to need me.  Sigh.  She never did. 

Here's a video I took of the parade this afternoon.  I think it was all students from Ross.  Maybe it's just the university's attempt to make students feel like they're participating, without them having to be awake at 3 am.  I don't know.  It wasn't nearly as loud, so Bean and I went out and watched it.  She seemed to like the music and the colors.  Most importantly, you can see at the head of the parade the insanely large conglomeration of speakers.  The afternoon parade was loud, but still probably four times less loud than it was this morning/last night.  This is not a particularly exciting video, but it's 24 seconds of an interesting bit of culture.  Sorry that I didn't get out there at 3 am to get the real thing.

And now, as I write this, I can hear some pounding music, but at enough of a distance that is bothers me barely at all.  I don't think I have ever been so aware of or so excited for Ash Wednesday.  I will say that I went into town on Saturday and got a taste of the celebration in the air and thought for a minute or two that it might be fun to check out what Carnival was like, even if I don't drink.  I may have been influenced by the really pretty masks I saw for sale.  Maybe.  Anyway, Ash Wednesday will be here soon, soon.  I may never be so aware of it again in my life.  And I'm ok with that.

Conclusion:  It came to pass.

ps - It's strange, I didn't grow up in a culture where Carnival (or Mardi Gras, or even Lent for that matter) was a part of life at all.  Still, I feel like I have a pretty good general understanding of the history of it.  Or I thought I did until this afternoon when my neighbor, Chris (she's Dominican by heritage, but spent most of her adult life in England, still she understands and is part of the culture here - way more than me), was lamenting the continued celebration of Carnival.  She said it heralds back to the days of slavery where slave "owners" would allow only one day for slaves to take time off and celebrate.  She said the costumes' origin was in how the slaves dressed up like their "masters" and their concubines.  I had to agree that maintaining any tradition connected to slavery is lamentable.  I was confused, however, since my understanding of Carnival connects it much more to Catholicism than to slavery.  She should know though, so I accepted.  Until, of course, I checked on Wikipedia (the source of all light and truth).  Wiki made no mention of Carnival's connection to slavery.  In fact, it seemed to be very much a European tradition that connects to other pagan, pre-Christian rituals.  I'm led to doubt Chris.  I'm curious where her understanding of it comes from.  What do you think I should believe?