When you think about get­ting fit­ter, you prob­a­bly pic­ture los­ing weight, build­ing mus­cle or fit­ting com­fort­ably in­to your clothes. Your bones may not make that list.

As Oc­to­ber ends, so too does Caribbean Folk­lore Month, a cel­e­bra­tion of the re­gion’s rich oral tra­di­tions, fas­ci­nat­ing leg­ends and cul­tur­al her­itage. Yet the sto­ries that have trav­elled from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion are far from fad­ing in­to the past.

On Oc­to­ber 22, Sha­res­sa Fras­er proud­ly walked across the UWI Fac­ul­ty of Law grad­u­a­tion stage to col­lect her diplo­ma—an ac­com­plish­ment she does not take light­ly. Not be­cause she didn’t work hard for it, but be­cause it was the bit­ter­sweet cul­mi­na­tion of a phase of her life she is not sure she would have made it through with­out the shoul­ders she was al­lowed to stand on.

A South Ko­re­an liv­ing in South Africa who loves chut­ney mu­sic? When we saw the video of Min-Jae Cho jam­ming en­thu­si­as­ti­cal­ly to Ray­mond Ram­nar­ine and De­vanand Gat­too’s 2023 track ‘Shake It Ba­by’ in his car, we had to reach out to find out more.

The vi­brant colours of Car­ni­val, the in­fec­tious rhythms of so­ca and the warmth of Caribbean cul­ture found a home thou­sands of miles away in Japan, as So­ca in Japan cel­e­brat­ed an­oth­er suc­cess­ful pro­duc­tion from Sep­tem­ber 17 to 24.

The fi­nal night of the Hin­du Prachaar Kendra’s 20th An­niver­sary Baal Ramdil­la was held at the Kendra Greens in En­ter­prise, Ch­agua­nas, on Sat­ur­day, Oc­to­ber 24.

For many of us, pets are far more than an­i­mals liv­ing in our homes. They are com­pan­ions, sources of com­fort and cher­ished fam­i­ly mem­bers. They greet us af­ter long days, of­fer com­pan­ion­ship dur­ing dif­fi­cult times and be­come part of our every­day rou­tines.

When God gave Joseph two prophet­ic dreams at 17, he an­nounced Joseph’s fu­ture el­e­va­tion to po­lit­i­cal promi­nence.

From a very young age, Chantel Daniel-Atkin­son knew what the pin­na­cle of her ca­reer would look like – her sig­na­ture on the T&T cur­ren­cy. But as fate would have it, she was redi­rect­ed in­to run­ning the fam­i­ly busi­ness, with her sig­na­ture on the cheques and doc­u­ments as­so­ci­at­ed with the Laven­tille-based Pro­fes­sion­al Garage Ltd.

Oc­to­ber is over and for many Trin­bag­o­ni­ans, the count­down to Christ­mas has qui­et­ly be­gun. Not just the usu­al con­ver­sa­tions about where we will lime, what we will cook and who is host­ing this year, but con­ver­sa­tions about the house.

Hap­py 4th Birth­day to Nao­mi and Kezi­ah Greenidge from Ren’s Bright Be­gin­ners. They cel­e­brat­ed their birth­day on Oc­to­ber 6.

Re­sis­tance is an on­go­ing body of work by artist Natasha Ma­habir-Per­sad, ex­plor­ing Caribbean his­tor­i­cal mem­o­ry through the lives of peo­ple who re­sist­ed, chal­lenged or dis­rupt­ed sys­tems of pow­er.