Grow­ing up in Bar­rack­pore, where his par­ents worked as cane farm­ers, Dr Sharaz Khan learnt ear­ly that suc­cess was not sim­ply about how far one trav­elled in life, but about re­mem­ber­ing where the jour­ney be­gan.

“Tired” can mean falling asleep at your desk, strug­gling to climb stairs, los­ing in­ter­est in every­thing or feel­ing ut­ter­ly spent af­ter an or­di­nary show­er. It may seem easy to take a “ton­ic” or vi­t­a­min, but the un­der­ly­ing cause must be de­ter­mined.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

From a very young age, Chantel Daniel-Atkin­son knew what the pin­na­cle of her ca­reer would look like – her sig­na­ture on the T&T cur­ren­cy. But as fate would have it, she was redi­rect­ed in­to run­ning the fam­i­ly busi­ness, with her sig­na­ture on the cheques and doc­u­ments as­so­ci­at­ed with the Laven­tille-based Pro­fes­sion­al Garage Ltd.

On Oc­to­ber 22, Sha­res­sa Fras­er proud­ly walked across the UWI Fac­ul­ty of Law grad­u­a­tion stage to col­lect her diplo­ma—an ac­com­plish­ment she does not take light­ly. Not be­cause she didn’t work hard for it, but be­cause it was the bit­ter­sweet cul­mi­na­tion of a phase of her life she is not sure she would have made it through with­out the shoul­ders she was al­lowed to stand on.

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.