Trinidad stilt walker tours 25 US states

(Trinidad Guardian) A Point Fortin youth has gone from nev­er step­ping foot out of T&T to tour­ing across more than 25 states in Amer­i­ca with­in a year through the art of stilt walk­ing.

Proud­ly wav­ing the na­tion­al flag to all and sundry who vis­it­ed the Uni­ver­Soul Cir­cus, Kay­o­de Du­val’s per­for­mance was so im­pres­sive that he has been asked to re­turn to the cir­cus for a sec­ond time. He leaves on Mon­day for New Jer­sey and is ex­pect­ed to re­turn at the end of the year.

Du­val, known as Bal­ance in the en­ter­tain­ment are­na, is one of sev­er­al stu­dents from Kaisokah Moko Jumbies who has rep­re­sent­ed the coun­try at the cir­cus with a T&T cul­tur­al con­tin­gent, in­clud­ing lim­bo dancers, over the past 15 years. The 22-year-old youth said per­form­ing at the cir­cus was his biggest dream. “It is a dream come through for me,” Du­val told the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day.

“It is some­thing I al­ways want­ed to do. The best part of per­form­ing across there was wav­ing the flag be­fore thou­sands of peo­ple. They (pa­trons) en­joyed it to the fullest. The crowd would get ex­cit­ed when we wave the flag.”

He said some peo­ple had ex­pressed a de­sire to vis­it T&T af­ter some of his per­for­mances.

He re­called that from a ten­der age he had watched youths in his com­mu­ni­ty do­ing stilt walk­ing.

“I used to be both­er­ing my grand­moth­er and ask­ing her to join. So when I was about three or four-years-old my grand­moth­er put me to stand up on two milk pans for me to get my bal­ance and by age five I was walk­ing on three-and-a-half-foot long stilts.”

He said he start­ed off with Dex­ter Stew­art and As­so­ciates from Point Fortin and then branched off to the Ju­nior Bis­nath’s school of art.

Du­val, who now walks on five-and-a-half-foot long stilts, has been per­form­ing at dif­fer­ent events, in­clud­ing Car­ni­val and Bor­ough Day ac­tiv­i­ties, for the past sev­en years. His pres­ence at the cir­cus was ini­tial­ly re­quest­ed in 2015 and 2016 but he did not have a pass­port.

“I fi­nal­ly left last year Jan­u­ary and I came back in De­cem­ber. At­lanta was the first place I per­formed and then I trav­elled to oth­er states with­in the US.”

He al­so trav­elled once to the Unit­ed King­dom where he per­formed in Scot­land.

“It was very ex­cit­ing for me. The first time I per­formed I was a bit ner­vous,” he said adding the T&T con­tin­gent’s dance rou­tine was most­ly to so­ca hits from Machel Mon­tano.

“This is the biggest op­por­tu­ni­ty you can get out of stilt walk­ing. From the time the crowd sees the flag they go mad. This was one of the proud­est mo­ments in my life.”

He said his on­ly sad­ness dur­ing the pe­ri­od was that he missed the birth of his first child Khaliyah, who is now sev­en months-old.

He said stilt walk­ing can play a sig­nif­i­cant role in re­duc­ing crime.

“There will be few­er chil­dren on the streets and it is al­so a way of in­still­ing dis­ci­pline in youths.”

Du­val worked as a rig­ger and banks­man be­fore the cir­cus stint. He en­cour­aged his fel­low Moko Jumbies to con­tin­ue to rep­re­sent T&T proud­ly and thanked Bis­nath and Stew­art for their sup­port and en­cour­age­ment.

Bis­nath said each year three or four stilt walk­ers join the cir­cus and de­pend­ing on their per­for­mance and con­duct they would be asked to re­turn.

“Some of our boys end up get­ting wife and chil­dren and build­ing a life across there,” he said.

Bis­nath said one of his goals is to have a stilt-walk­ing pro­gramme in every school.

“In every school, you could have more than 200 chil­dren want­i­ng to do silt walk­ing.”

How­ev­er, he said through the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion they have been vis­it­ing schools through­out the coun­try to train young moko jumbies. He said this was al­so a way of build­ing cor­dial re­la­tion­ships among youths who live in war­ring com­mu­ni­ties. The youngest silt walk­er he trained was his son Ojah at the age of 11 months and the old­est per­son was age 76, he said.

Bis­nath said he will be mak­ing an­oth­er at­tempt to en­ter the Guin­ness World Records with the largest moko jumbie con­tin­gent to gath­er in one place. He tried last year on his 60th birth­day but fell short with on­ly 500 silt walk­ers gath­ered at Skin­ner Park.

Du­val was one of the moko jumbies who per­formed at the open­ing of the Diego Mar­tin Sport­ing Com­plex last week­end which was at­tend­ed by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.