Missing Carnival, Missing Christmas

It is Ash Wednesday in Jamaica, and I am listening to the radio in Trinidad over the internet thinking that I missed my annual pilgrimage to Port of Spain.

This after missing Christmas.

My wife and I spent a month in South Africa visiting with my sister and her family, and my parents. We had a great time with the family, and had fun camping and going out to stores, visiting friends and trying to figure out the country (as mentioned in other posts.)

But, in a country that has 17 official languages, and even more religions, Christmas is just not a big deal. Hardly any decorations. No carols. One or two flashing lights here and there. No trees to speak of.

Also, there were no other relatives within a few thousand miles for any of us, very few Jamaicans at all, and just friends to go and visit -- all new friends to me, that is. In South Africa, December marks the start of the summer holidays, so people tend to leave Johannesburg where we were for other places in the world. The visiting family and friends that is such a part of Christmas here in Jamaica were all missing, to say nothing of the parties... Frenchmen New year's Day party, et al.

Christmas came and went, and when I got back to Jamaica it felt like it was still coming... like when I left on Dec 5th. The truth is, it had kind of passed us by.

Coming back was a 24 hour drama of its own, with stops in Paris and London on the way back to Kingston -- without ALL our checked luggage.

That finally came two weeks later... wet.

As we arrived back home, we started packing for a complete move to a bigger place.

So, we were just in mood to pick up ourselves and take ourselves to Trinidad, to be back on an airplane and back living out of suitcases. So, I changed our Carnival tickets bought several months ago with frequent flyer mileage and we agree to skip Carnival this year.

It felt like the right thing to do.

Until about Carnival Thursday, that is. Then the music started to get into our system... Machel's Jumbie, Crazy's Cold Sweat and Patrice's Sugar Boy (my favorite.) And we started to think about what we'd be doing if we were there... Girl Power... Insomnia...Breakfast Fete... Lara... Jouvert... mas....

All of a sudden the thousands of US dollars all this fun would costs shrunk away, and all we could think was that we were missing the fun.

Now we are looking for another Carnival to visit, as it looks as if I am going to miss Jamaica Carnival due to a business trip.

So, now what?