The Adulteress’ Pajamas

We had settled into permanent residence in Dominica and were almost simultaneously warmly welcomed into the life and times of both the Dominicans and the small, mostly British expatriate community. Among other things, we were introduced to, and quickly learned to love, Carnival. Perhaps this letter I wrote to my mother in Florida after we had participated in carnival a number of times best describes the event.

“Dear Sue-Sue, (our children’s name for their Grandmother). Apologies for the lack of letters of late, but we have just finished Carnival. It’s called running Mas. Mas is Creole for mask, which everyone used to wear during the festival. That is until a few years ago when the police decided there was too much score settling under the cover of the disguise. Now it’s illegal to wear a mask but Carnival is quite safe, and wonderful fun.

As you know we have been encouraging you to schedule one of your visits to Dominica just before Lent so that you could participate in Carnival. This wonderful holiday is the Monday and Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. In New Orleans they call this Mardi Gras.

Each Carnival seems better than the last, and we have had more fun this year than ever before, so let me tell you about some of the happenings so that you may stiffen your resolve to come next year.

Dominicans are so enthusiastic about celebrating this event that most plan for it for months. What they lack in big money to spend on expensive costumes they make up for with imagination and enthusiasm.

The actual festivities begin a full week before Carnival. Competitions are held in the Capitol for a lot of things such as Carnival Queen, the most accomplished Steel Band, and the hard fought competition to determine the best Calypso and also the best Calypsonian. From the Calypso competition comes the one song which the revelers choose to sing the most during Carnival. It may not be the winner of the competition but it becomes the road song of that year. The road song is usually one that is easy to remember because of a catchy phrase or two, it’s usually naughty, and it’s the one quickly picked up by the crowds running Mas.

By the preceding Saturday the preliminaries are out of the way and the anticipation of the first party of the Carnival weekend takes hold of everyone. This night is called Samidi Gras (pronounced sort of like Sam-di-graw).

The Union Club has a really great fete Saturday night. There is hardly enough room to move in the place when it gets going, but so what. The music is live and hot and the dancing gets so energized that everyone is soon “Jumping up” and having a heck of a good time.

That’s the real beginning of Carnival, and many of the dozens of groups, called Bands, have private parties if they are not going to the Union Club.

A Band is really a band of persons rather than a musical band although there is a lot of music at Carnival. There are social bands, which I will describe for you later, and there are the big theme bands. The theme bands are made up a lot of people and each participant agrees to make a costume that fits the theme of the band. One year our whole band and family was Chinese. They have cowboy motifs, space motifs, fantasy motifs, red Indians (as distinguished from East Indians). You can probably think of a few more. These groups really do a wonderful job with costumes and they construct floats that carry their particular motif. There is no real restriction on being in one of these. You get a lot of invitations to join or you can ask to join and they are glad to have you.

These theme bands are judged on Carnival Monday morning. Each group forms up and moves into the parade at the position they have been given and they move through town slowly past the judges. It is generally the same in Rio and Trinidad, and New Orleans I’m sure. It is amazing how good these groups are and how much fun it is to participate.

You know, of course, how wonderfully Dominicans treat expatriates here. They joke and say that anyone foolish enough to come and live on such a poor island has to be a mixer and mixers are loved, be they white, red or yellow, and especially if they are American.

For some time we have been invited members of the Business Man’s Band. This is just a social band and there are many social bands each Carnival as well. They do not parade in competition for the prizes as the theme bands do.

The Business Man’s Band has about thirty-five members; mostly couples. We each contribute twenty dollars or so and the organizers purchase and provide us with all the food we can eat, all the drink we wish to consume, they hire a 4 or 5 piece band giv us a distinctive locally made shirt for each of the two days, and a locally made straw hat. This way we all look like members of the same group and boozed interlopers are easily spotted. In addition several members of the band own large homes in the town and open them to us so that we have way-stations to stop in after ‘chipping’ down the crowded street for twenty or thirty minutes. Believe me, one is in need of something refreshing by that time. ‘Chipping’ is a kind of bouncing dance step that everyone does to move down the street in the group. It’s sometimes called marching, but it really is an enervating sort of dance step.

On Monday the Parade of the Bands starts everything at about nine. These are the theme bands. This takes about two hours for them to move through the parade route for judging. We all observe this first part of Carnival Monday from one of our friend’s second floor verandahs.

Our band’s typical day starts about eleven on each of the mornings, at a pre-arranged meeting place in one of the band member’s homes. This time it was our friends, the Cecil Bellots’, you remember meeting them.

Drinks are consumed eagerly and early, and conviviality begins.

The anticipation, the drinks, and good friends gathered for the purpose of Carnival begins to meld into a party pitch. By the time the floats and theme bands have passed through town we are ready. Our pre-designated leader calls “Hit the road!” and we all file out into the street, most holding our drinks in paper or plastic cups. We form lines of six or eight across, reaching across the width of the narrow street and the leader faces us, directing our form-up. When he is satisfied that we are all in position he calls up our small hired musical ensemble which has been retained to bring up the rear and give a musical beat. This ensemble consists of local musicians. One with a Shiak-shiak, (my spelling) which is a hollow gourd or tin, like a food grater one scrapes. Another will have a hollow limb called a Boom-boom through which he blows for a throbbing base, thum-thum, thum-thum, for beat. We usually have a trumpet player, and always a drummer, usually using a Lapo-cabrit, or goat-skin drum, but sometimes he prefers a Tambou-twavai drum. Some years we have also had a concertina player. This musical band will receive no pay if any member is caught having a drink during Carnival. I am sure the operative word here is ‘caught’.

Once thus assembled we begin ‘running mas’ down the road. Running is chipping, and is what you often see (on TV) the people in South Africa doing when they move in a large group down the road. I don’t know if you noticed, but they have that kind of bouncing, dance-like, step. So, you can imagine us going down the street, our leader in front making sure we stay in line and keeping any really rowdy drunk from invading our midst. Each of us may be holding the waist of the ones on each side or “breaking away” to chip on our own. Of course, we are chipping the whole time. The little musical band at our rear keeps us moving together to the cadence of the Lapo-cabrit, and we sip constantly on our drink to keep to the spirit of Carnival.

Let me tell you, it is exhausting, so we don’t stay on the street more than a few short blocks before we come to another ‘hospitality house’ and break ranks to go inside for a rest. Here we may eat a snack, but certainly we refresh our drink. Our little musical ensemble comes in also and plays while we dance if we wish; a much easier thing than chipping.

Certainly there is nothing to stop any of us from climbing any stair in the town for fun. Almost all of the residences in town are on the second floor with shops on the ground floor. There is not one residence in town that will not welcome you in and see that you have good food and drink if you will accept it. There is probably no place more hospitable than any Dominican’s home at Carnival, and most any other time as well for that matter.

At any rate, in our regular gang, after half an hour or so, refreshed and recharged, we are called back on the street and so it goes all afternoon.

Oh, but telling the best, last, I have to tell you about our Business Man’s Band Samidi Gras party this year. This involves a lot of people you have met on your visits here.

As you can imagine, Saturday we were all ready for Carnival. Sparrow Winston’s lovely house in town was chosen for this Samidi Gras fete. If you will recall, his house is on the corner with that big living room, dining room, and kitchen on the ground floor and bedrooms upstairs. There is a more than ample bar in the back yard under that big mango tree.

We had a good musical band that night and the bar was not holding to pony whiskey measures. (much smaller than a one and a half oz. shot we are familiar with.) We had sent over half a dozen large blocks of ice from our Cold Store so there were large tubs of iced beer along side of the bar.

“Little” Meg Kirk and her husband, Cecil (Remember the British pronunciation is Sess-ell rather than the American See-sell), were in our group. I’m sure you remember; they gave that nice punch party for you when you visited here last year.

Late news on them is that they have been having a rough time with their marriage. It’s common knowledge that Cecil has been running around on Meg and Meg, in response has been making eyes at Alec Bowles. You remember Alec; he is the Englishman who has been here for years and lives up the Morne from the Dominica Club.

As a result of this nonsense both Meg and Cecil have managed to make the other jealous and miserable. Meg’s rekindling of an old romance with Alec has turned the tables on Cecil and he is now insanely jealous of her, even though he started the wandering. ‘Sauce for the goose’, we all say.

This Samidi Gras night Meg was wearing a deep red, flowered print jump suit she had ordered from the UK. which she had bought despite Cecil’s admonition not to embarrass him by dressing in such a nonsense.

As the evening wore on both Meg and Cecil were increasingly alcohol influenced as, indeed, were we all.

Cecil kept watching his wife every time she came near that old roue’ Alec. Alec, keeping his hand in, was flirting outrageously with two visiting women. This was the same Alec, who openly vowed to bed any woman he could. After the night wore on he focused on Meg and obviously wanted to assume the bedding position with her and was getting boozed enough to forget discretion.

Finally, after midnight, with no letup in the party festivities at Sparrow’s, Alec managed to corner Meg who by this time was angry about Cecil’s wandering eye, and persuaded her to go with him to his little house three blocks away, up the hill, on the Morne.

They were both sloshed, but managed to reach Alec’s house and negotiate the steep stairs to the open front porch. They turned out the light and stripped for action, going at it on a little day bed on the open porch.

After their exertions they fell instantly asleep, in the dark, in the all-together, in each other’s arms.

Cecil, missing Meg, and also Alec, instantly knew, without hard evidence that the two had gone off together. Alec’s house was the logical venue for the mischief so he rushed off to catch them there.

Stomping heavily up the steps, Cecil reached the darkened porch and, knowing where the switch was, turned on the lights. There they were, buck naked, intertwined, and asleep.

“Ah, ha!” Cecil shouted in drunken triumph. “Caught you!”

“Oh, Cecil,” Meg exclaimed sleepily, “Turn off that light!”

Flustered, Cecil reacted by obediently turning off the light but triumphantly repeated his ‘Ah Ha!’ in the dark before he turned to leave, complete in the knowledge that he had been the one of the two to actually catch his or her spouse in the act.

Cecil staggered back to the party at Sparrow’s and began bragging to all that would listen that he had caught Meg and Alec in the altogether.

Few seemed sober enough to care.

Soon Alec and Meg returned cautiously to the dimly lit back yard and took up drinking at the bar as though they had never left.

When confronted with Cecil’s accusation they laughed and simply denied it. They knew, after all, that he had no witness.

“Oh nonsense, Cecil,” Meg chided, “whatever are you making up such a story?” She had gotten off the barstool and was headed to the house to visit the loo.

As Meg reached the bright lights of the house she was stopped by two ladies who had been listening to both sides of the story.

“Why Meg, look! You’ve got your jump suit on inside out,” they exclaimed.

Meg said later that she could swear that all conversation stopped in the entire party and everyone turned her way. She referred to her jump suit from that time on as her Adultery Pajamas.

From: Twenty Years In The Caribbean: Caribbean Island (true) Stories