Carnival climax

Neither Wednesday’s announcement of Jamaica’s first monkeypox case nor the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic was enough to stop carnival revellers from transforming Kingston’s streets into a festival of colour Sunday.

The summertime carnival was the clearest sign of the scale of disruptiveness of the novel coronavirus, which had caused cancellations in 2020 and 2021 and threatened this year’s usual Easter season renewal because of the fifth wave.

For some, like Shanique Singh, the decision to chip down the streets in the searing summer heat was as easy as acknowledging that she has one life to live.

“So you have to make the best of it and do whatever makes you happy,” the blonde bombshell told The Gleaner.

Jumping with the Xodus band, Singh said it was her second time at carnival in Jamaica. Her only complaint was the broiling July temperature.

Dancing away from the congestion of trucks was Cailia Adams, whose reason for attending the road march was rooted in her already purchased costume from 2019.

“I’m not going to put my money in the trash. I have to make use of it,” she said. “So far, it’s been good, and I’m keeping my distance in little empty areas.”

Reveller Paula Nesbeth, who is fully vaccinated against COVID-19 and got a booster for added protection, felt safe attending the big jumping day.

“I feel good knowing that the vaccines are effective. At least I’m not going to end up in the hospital or worse,” she told The Gleaner.

Also having purchased her costume from 2019 and misssing out on the 2020 edition, she wanted to make use of it as well as be liberated from the COVID-induced house arrest that triggered lockdowns and curfews for two years.

“I decided to come out because we’ve been cooped up for a long time, and honestly, I don’t even know how to socially interact anymore, so this is a nice way instead of doing it one by one,” said Nesbeth. “It’s like drinking from a firehose.”

While she described the experience as enjoyable and positive, it took some time to get used to the new route.

Carnival bands Xodus and Bacchanal opted for wider corridors to allow for physical distancing and a comfortable march experience, covering Hope Road, Lady Musgrave Road, Trafalgar Road, Oxford Road, and Knutsford Boulevard.

First-time jumper Tojorn Barrington had hoped to participate in the road march in 2020 and said he would not miss the occasion this time around because of any pandemic.

“I’m excited to be out on the road with my friends. Soca is life,” he stated. “If dem did tell me last year say it a keep, mi woulda still go regardless.”

Still, he hopes next year will be better as he knows people who were hesitant to attend amid memories of the death and devastation in aggressive waves of the coronavirus.

At least three of Jamaica’s five waves of the pandemic have been punishing, pushing hospitals to the brink with overflowing wards and threatening deficits of oxygen supply to critical patients with the respiratory disease.

Almost 144,000 persons here have been confirmed as positive, but health officials believe hundreds of thousands more have contracted the virus. More than 3,150 people in Jamaica have died from COVID-19.

Joining feters was Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett, who left the Carnival in Jamaica truck to trek down the road with revellers in what he said was “part of his intelligence gathering”.

The minister, who came directly from the Jamaica Labour Party’s 79th anniversary church service at Webster Memorial, said he had no concerns surrounding the road march even with the country’s first confirmed case of monkeypox.

The travel and tourism industry was decimated globally and nationally by COVID-19 in the first half of 2020 as the cruise shipping sector collapsed and governments closed ports to incoming passenger traffic.

Bullish on the return of pre-pandemic crossborder traffic, Bartlett believes the world has now come to grips with the fact that COVID-19 will not disappear any time soon.

“We have also come to the fact that there are going to be strains that will develop, but we have developed, over the periods, science that has been working for us in terms of creating antidotes and/or creating mitigating actions ... .

“So, we’re not panicking when there’s a strain. We’re managing it and so we keep our economy going and our people active.”

sade.gardner@gleanerjm.com