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.

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.

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.

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.

For In­ter­na­tion­al Men’s Health Month, this re­porter set out to doc­u­ment the re­al­i­ties of men di­ag­nosed with breast can­cer. The goal was to high­light a de­mo­graph­ic of­ten left out of con­ver­sa­tions sur­round­ing a dis­ease over­whelm­ing­ly as­so­ci­at­ed with women.

The next ma­jor pub­lic health threat fac­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go may not ar­rive with the vis­i­ble fear and ur­gency of a pan­dem­ic.

Chron­ic func­tion­al con­sti­pa­tion is the most com­mon type of con­sti­pa­tion in young chil­dren. There is noth­ing wrong with the child’s hor­mones or in­testi­nal sys­tem. It is a so­cio-psy­cho­log­i­cal prob­lem re­lat­ed to par­ent­ing. It is be­com­ing com­mon as moth­ers have to work out­side the house and chil­dren are placed in nurs­eries at an ear­ly age. Con­sti­pa­tion is al­so sel­dom seen in fam­i­lies where chil­dren eat prop­er­ly.

Be­fore Labour Day be­came a pub­lic hol­i­day and be­fore thou­sands marched through the streets of Fyz­abad every June 19, there was one idea that unit­ed Trinidad and To­ba­go’s work­ing class – sol­i­dar­i­ty for­ev­er.