Ja­maican reg­gae artiste Austill “Zag­ga” Hen­ry has spent years build­ing a rep­u­ta­tion for up­lift­ing mu­sic and con­scious mes­sages, but 2026 may prove to be his biggest year yet.

In the bustling town and ur­ban com­mu­ni­ty of San Juan, 11A San­ta Cruz Old Road will come alive to­day from 6 pm, when the gates of Pam­beri Steel Or­ches­tra’s (Pam­beri) pa­n­yard open for the sev­enth stag­ing of Labour & Steel.

For more than two decades, Gary Ja­grup has made Trinidad and To­ba­go laugh with a gift few pos­sess - the abil­i­ty to be­come some­one else with just the sound of his voice.

When Seon Nurse steps on­to one of the world’s biggest cul­tur­al stages as chore­o­g­ra­ph­er for a FI­FA Fan Fes­ti­val pre­sen­ta­tion with Uni­ver­Soul Cir­cus, he car­ries much more than chore­og­ra­phy with him.

Few things are more dis­ap­point­ing than ar­riv­ing with an ap­petite for dou­bles or bar­be­cue, on­ly to find the stand closed for the day.

Re­mem­ber as a child when you had a cough and Grand­ma would go in­to her home gar­den for fresh herbs to boil some bush tea on the stove? Or when Mom­my poured you a cup of bit­ter or­ange peel tea be­cause you had a gas pain? Back in the day, reach­ing for a pill for every mi­nor ail­ment was far from the norm. Look­ing back, we re­alise that those sim­pler times had a wis­dom all their own.

It’s a cool Sat­ur­day evening in Beause­jour Vil­lage, Blue Basin, Diego Mar­tin. In­side her front yard, Eliz­a­beth Bel­con, her fam­i­ly and neigh­bours slide a fi­nal batch of dough in­to a glow­ing dirt oven. The aro­ma of fresh bread fills the air.

The Blue Basin Wa­ter­wheel in Diego Mar­tin sits in that rare cat­e­go­ry of her­itage where the phys­i­cal ob­ject sur­vives, but the writ­ten record is thin, so the his­to­ry has to be re­con­struct­ed from land­scape, colo­nial pat­terns, en­gi­neer­ing log­ic, and the wider sto­ry of the val­ley it­self.

Wel­come back to the fi­nal in­stal­ment of our three-part se­ries on Fyz­abad, where we un­cov­er the his­to­ry of the town that re­shaped Trinidad and To­ba­go.

There is the his­toric Knollys Tun­nel, the longest aban­doned rail­way tun­nel in Trinidad, and the scenic Navet Dam, whose wa­ters wind through the hills of the Cen­tral Range.

Hid­den among the rolling green hills of Tabaquite, where mist some­times set­tles gen­tly over co­coa fields, and forests whis­per with the sounds of bird­song, stands one of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s most re­mark­able re­minders of a van­ished age.

A man can tell you ex­act­ly what’s wrong with his car. He can iden­ti­fy a faulty bat­tery, a worn tyre, a strange vi­bra­tion com­ing from the en­gine, or the faintest hint that some­thing is not quite right.