Hundreds turn out to the first morning of the Nine Mornings Festival

Hundreds of Vincentians turned out to the first session of the Nine Mornings Festival, getting fully in the spirit of the season.

On Tuesday, December 16, in the wee hours of the morning, both the young, the old and the inbetweens flocked to Heritage Square in Kingstown to partake in the unique, long-standing Christmas tradition.{{more}}

The Tuesday session began with devotions led by the Mt Sinai Spiritual Baptist Church, and then saw the lively and responsive crowd treated to performances from the Sion Hill Euphonium Steel Orchestra, First Choice Gospel Band, Youth With a Purpose dance group, Urban Expressions, and a monologue/skit from Spring Village resident Caroline Jordan, among others.

Adults and children alike also took part in street aerobics, and various competitions that included drinking ginger beer, peeling tangerines, doing push ups, imitating animals, singing, acting out scenarios and other entertaining activites.

Prizes for winning the competitions included cases of various carbonated beverages, top-up credit from Digicel, store credit from Courts, and various other branded paraphernalia.

These daily sessions will continue until Wednesday, December 24, and will feature other special events such as street ball, table tennis road tennis, street volleyball, and cycle, tricycle and scooter races.

Prizes and giveaways will be provided by Gonsalves Liquors, Coreas Hazells Inc, SVG/NY Diaspora Committee, CIBC First Caribbean International Bank, St Vincent Brewery Ltd, COSAGO, Courts St Vincent, SVG Chamber of Commerce, KFC, Subway, Club St Vincent, The Beauty Shak, Bickles, FLOW, Save A Lot Food Stores, Invest SVG, Western Union and LIME.

Hosts at the Tuesday session included chairman of the Nine Mornings committee Michael Peters, entertainers Gloria Williams and Shevrell ‘Candy Man’ McMillan, and ASP Jonathan Nicholls. (JSV)