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.

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.

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.

For gen­er­a­tions of cit­i­zens, the sprawl­ing com­pound on the West­ern Main Road has been en­tire­ly syn­ony­mous with law en­force­ment. Since the 1890s, near­ly every po­lice of­fi­cer who has sworn to pro­tect and serve our na­tion has marched through its his­toric gates. Yet, long be­fore it be­came the bedrock of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), the St James Bar­racks was a vi­tal mil­i­tary strong­hold built to safe­guard the British Em­pire’s most prized Caribbean pos­ses­sion.

It is one of the most com­mon as­sump­tions that if you eat well, avoid smok­ing, lim­it al­co­hol, and ex­er­cise, you will re­main healthy and avoid dis­ease. The truth is that health is not mea­sured this way. Re­al­i­ty can tell a dif­fer­ent sto­ry be­cause many of us who ap­pear to do every­thing “right” can still de­vel­op heart dis­ease, can­cer, men­tal health is­sues, and oth­er health com­pli­ca­tions.

For In­di­an clas­si­cal dancer Sádé Budhlall, it’s im­por­tant that cre­ative ex­pres­sion is fused with open mind­ed­ness, prop­er re­search and mean­ing­ful col­lab­o­ra­tion for its full essence to be felt.

With her soul­ful, pow­er­ful voice, big smile and stun­ning fash­ion en­sem­bles, the vo­cal leg­end knows ex­act­ly how to draw in her au­di­ences, hav­ing per­formed songs from her three al­bums for decades on stages across the world.