Wood smoke drifts lazi­ly through the coun­try­side, car­ry­ing with it the com­fort­ing aro­mas of fresh­ly baked bread, bub­bling piz­za and food pre­pared the way gen­er­a­tions once knew—over fire, in clay, and with pa­tience.

For some peo­ple, cheese­cake is an ac­quired taste; for oth­ers like Crys­tal Sylvester, it was love at first bite, and a re­la­tion­ship that con­tin­ues to grow sweet­er with time.

How many house­holds still swiz­zle callaloo, leave meat overnight in the slow cook­er to have it falling off the bone the next day, or make buss up shut by hand on a tawa? We’re will­ing to bet not many.

If you grew up in the rur­al heart­lands of Trinidad and To­ba­go, your first su­per­mar­ket wasn’t an air-con­di­tioned aisle - it was the bush. Long be­fore im­port­ed ap­ples and grapes be­came every­day sta­ples, a coun­try­side child­hood meant roam­ing the hills, armed with a long bam­boo rod and a sharp eye, for­ag­ing for sea­son­al trea­sures.

As the af­ter­noon sun be­gins its slow de­scent over the Gulf of Paria, vis­i­tors make their way along the nar­row cause­way lead­ing to one of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s most trea­sured land­marks.

Tucked among the rolling hills off the SS Erin Road in the Pe­nal/Debe re­gion lies Phillip­ine, a com­mu­ni­ty whose his­to­ry stretch­es from colo­nial sug­ar plan­ta­tions to the heart of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s po­lit­i­cal life.

Scroll through so­cial me­dia to­day, and you may be bom­bard­ed by ag­gres­sive fit­ness con­tent cre­ators with their gru­elling, com­plex di­ets and work­out rou­tines. But fit­ness in­struc­tor Sha­reef Ali is dif­fer­ent, in­spir­ing all gen­er­a­tions to un­lock their mo­bil­i­ty, one stretch at a time.

There is one im­age from child­hood that has nev­er left me. Af­ter the Com­mon En­trance re­sults were an­nounced, the school play­ground be­came a fes­ti­val of joy. Chil­dren ran across the yard call­ing out the names of their new schools. Par­ents em­braced one an­oth­er. Teach­ers smiled with qui­et sat­is­fac­tion. Yet, away from the noise, three girls sat to­geth­er on the con­crete steps be­side the taps. Their heads were bowed. No tears. No words. On­ly si­lence. It was whis­pered that they had failed. I have for­got­ten many ex­am­i­na­tion scores over the years, but I have nev­er for­got­ten those three chil­dren sit­ting alone while every­one else cel­e­brat­ed. It was the first time I un­der­stood that dis­ap­point­ment can be loneli­est when sur­round­ed by oth­er peo­ple’s hap­pi­ness.

For many peo­ple in Trinidad and To­ba­go, con­ver­sa­tions about bow­el habits re­main deeply un­com­fort­able. Blood in the stool is of­ten dis­missed as haem­or­rhoids. Per­sis­tent ab­dom­i­nal dis­com­fort is brushed aside as some­thing that was eat­en. Screen­ing is fre­quent­ly de­layed be­cause of fear, em­bar­rass­ment or the be­lief that col­orec­tal can­cer is a dis­ease that af­fects on­ly old­er peo­ple.

Atopic or al­ler­gic dis­eases (atopy is just an­oth­er word for al­ler­gy) have been in­creas­ing all over the world for the last 30 years. It is not un­ex­pect­ed then that al­ler­gic rash­es, or atopic der­mati­tis (AD), has al­so been in­creas­ing.

Every day, thou­sands of Trin­bag­o­ni­ans rush through the streets of Port-of-Spain. For some, it’s a dai­ly hus­tle for work. For oth­ers, it’s sim­ply home. And while lo­cals might walk past these streets with­out a sec­ond thought, vis­i­tors are of­ten left in awe of the grand ar­chi­tec­ture of many his­toric sites.

For six years, Lawrence Ar­joon has watched young peo­ple walk through the doors of the He­roes Foun­da­tion car­ry­ing bur­dens many adults would strug­gle to bear.