Our Ambassador to Brazil, Robert Torry, never fails to send me a copy of the Embassy's Newsletter "Report from the Southern Cone" of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay.
The lead article of the most recent Issue No 13, headlined "Chubby Soft Drinks in Brazil" brought to my mind ten-year old Canadian-born, Arik Day, of Trinidadian heritage, standing in the worst thunderstorm with driving rain and high winds, on Caribana Saturday, on Lakeshore Boulevard, Toronto, which can be considered in the Northern Cone, asking, to my utter amazement, not for a coca cola or seven up, but for a Chubby.
There were none for sale at the point where we were standing, and Arik would have nothing else, until one of the bands turned up handing out samples of Chubbies, which he carefully held all the way back home via both tramcar and subway.
The newsletter says that the manufacturers, SM Jaleel and Company Limited, have continued on a successful course to definitely enter the soft drink market in the North and Northeast of Brazil in a joint venture with a manufactuer in Belem, Para, the state where the fourth and latest Honorary Consul, Mario Valente Martins, has been appointed to promote and protect Trinidad and Tobago's interests in the vast country of Brazil, which ranks fifth in terms of geographical area and sixth in world population, with a figure of 167 million. Trinidad and Tobago has Honorary Consuls in the states of Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Goias and now Para, each of whom is a business and professional leader in his community and can give valuable tips on doing business in his region of Brazil.
So, says Ambassador Torry, "anyone travelling to Brazil should contact our Embassy in Brasilia for the address and phone numbers of the consuls nearest their destination."
Meanwhile, getting back to the manufacture of Chubby soft drinks in Brazil, a new bottling facility has been installed in Para, and production is due to begin soon. The flavours, are reported, to have already been accepted by consumers in the targetted regions and the local facility will be attempting to produce up to 200,000 cases of Chubby per month. Ambassador Torry paid an official visit to the state of Para recently, and was taken on a tour of the new bottling facility.
In the Northern Cone, memories came crowding back of Caribana Saturday, where Trinis like myself, Lindsay Williams, Len and Barbara Marshall, and Stokeley Regis, who would never stand in a slight drizzle to see mas in this country, stood in heavy showers waiting for the bands, which passed by intermittently, coming to a halt at the point where they realised that City TV cameras were filming for a late afternoon broadcast.
I can still feel the chill in my bones, through clothes soaked by driving rain, and see the forked lightning boldly standing out in the rain-laden, grey skies.
One spectator, Tracey Day, a Trinidadian, now resident in Toronto, had waited "one whole year for this parade" and continued to wait while being totally drenched.
But the masqueraders, at the end of a day of the worst rain in the history of Caribana, found it the best ever. The last time Trinis had played in rain like this was back home in the famous "Rainorama" Mas in May. .