Trinidad and To­ba­go’s his­to­ry is so rich that a walk through down­town Port-of-Spain re­vis­its three eras of the na­tion’s past—Span­ish, French and British.

She slug­gish­ly threw her legs over the side of the bed and sat up. She could bare­ly see the out­line of Roy’s body ly­ing next to her, but she could cer­tain­ly hear the drag­ging of a log along a gal­vanised roof with his every breath. It didn’t both­er her any more, though. But for some rea­son, late­ly, she’d wake up in the wee hours of the morn­ing, drained but un­able to go back to sleep.

Sto­ries of peo­ple who over­came pover­ty and hard­ship to achieve suc­cess and up­lift their com­mu­ni­ty have in­spired two au­thors to doc­u­ment a cen­tu­ry of his­to­ry along Pe­nal Rock Road, in­clud­ing dancer Dr Ra­jku­mar Kr­ish­na Per­sad, who once slept home­less in the Pe­nal Mar­ket be­fore go­ing on to per­form for Queen Eliz­a­beth II.

There is of­ten a neg­a­tive por­tray­al of the Cana­di­an mis­sion that ar­rived in Trinidad and To­ba­go (T&T) and a few oth­er British West In­di­an colonies dur­ing the 19th and 20th cen­turies.

Af­ter putting her own ed­u­ca­tion on hold to raise a fam­i­ly, Car­lette Giusep­pi-Pereira re­turned to uni­ver­si­ty in her 40s, bal­anc­ing moth­er­hood, teach­ing and stud­ies to earn a de­gree in lin­guis­tics at UWI St Au­gus­tine.

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.

The first time I heard about it, I want­ed to hike there: a lit­er­al plane crash in the mid­dle of the for­est in Trinidad.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.