June is Men’s health month. This is a time to bring aware­ness to health is­sues that af­fect men dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly and fo­cus­es on get­ting men to be­come aware of prob­lems they may have or could de­vel­op, and gain the courage to do some­thing about it. In this ar­ti­cle we high­light the more com­mon con­di­tions men are at risk of de­vel­op­ing to cre­ate the aware­ness in­tend­ed for this month.

As a busi­ness de­vel­op­ment con­sul­tant, I am al­ways re­search­ing; seek­ing to un­der­stand en­tre­pre­neur­ial trends, psy­cho­log­i­cal states and per­sua­sive in­flu­ences.

1) Too much in­doors and a lack of stim­u­la­tion leads to a de­crease in blood flow and a slug­gish scalp, there­by cre­at­ing a scale-like build-up, lead­ing to hair loss if left unchecked:

When Pas­tor In­di­ra Newal­lo takes the podi­um at The Apos­tles’ Min­istries (TAM) in Long­denville, Ch­agua­nas, she preach­es from a place of ex­pe­ri­ence and wis­dom. The peo­ple she coun­sels in her women’s min­istry, “Her Essence Re­vealed”, open their lives to her be­cause her sto­ry is not un­like theirs.

Among the slew of lo­cal en­ter­tain­ers tak­ing to the dig­i­tal space to meet their au­di­ences is Free­town Col­lec­tive with their Free­town Thurs­day Con­certs. This vir­tu­al con­cert se­ries, cur­rent­ly pre­sent­ed via Face­book Live (@weare­free­town), has as its pri­ma­ry aim to help keep peo­ple con­nect­ed through mu­sic dur­ing the on­go­ing COVID-19 quar­an­tine pe­ri­od.

Spices and sea­son­ings crack­le and crunch un­der the weight of the lorha, re­leas­ing an in­tox­i­cat­ing scent—and you just know some­thing good is about to go down in the kitchen. If this sce­nario rang any bells for you, then you’re a lucky per­son, and you know the val­ue of the orig­i­nal way of grind­ing up sea­son­ing in your aa­je’s (pa­ter­nal grand­moth­er) and nani’s (ma­ter­nal grand­moth­er) kitchens. Yes, we live in the age of food proces­sors and grinders, but can any­thing tru­ly re­place the good ole sil and lorha? I know I am nev­er giv­ing up my tawa for a grid­dle, so if you are lucky enough to have the true and tra­di­tion­al sil and lorha, I doubt you would want to give that up ei­ther.

You’d be hard pressed to find a sin­gle Trin­bag­on­ian kitchen that did not pos­sess a tawa. From the Hin­dus­tani word mean­ing “iron plate”, tawas are flat, cir­cu­lar grid­dles made of met­al that are used for cook­ing flat breads like the var­i­ous types of roti and roast-bakes. The first tawas in T&T were used in earth­en fire­places called chul­has that would crum­ble each rain­fall and need reg­u­lar leep­ay­ing (plas­ter­ing) with fresh clay. The tawa would sit atop a well stoked fire and dough flat­tened with a bil­na (rolling pin) would be placed on top of it to cook. When it was time to flip the dough a sim­tah, or tong-like uten­sil, would be used, al­though the most skil­ful roti-mak­ers would use swift and nim­ble hands and nev­er be burned! How­ev­er, the hall­mark of a true tawa-mas­ter is in their abil­i­ty to sakay—the tawa is pulled slight­ly off the fire and the par­tial­ly cooked dough is made to face the di­rect flames! This makes the dough swell and some even let it get a nice toast­ing. To­day lit­tle of these tech­niques has changed.

T&T is a poly­cul­tur­al par­adise, filled with vi­brant peo­ple of fete and faith, the home of the steel­pan. The ex­quis­ite lan­guage of this space is adorned with loan words in­di­cat­ing a so­ci­ety born from ar­du­ous jour­neys of its an­ces­tors. Our unique­ness is unique! De­spite the count­less av­enues tra­versed, a won­der­ful ar­ray of dish­es con­sti­tutes the de­lec­table cui­sine of this land from roti to dou­bles to fried bake. But have you ever won­dered about the cook­ing tools be­hind these scrump­tious every­day del­i­ca­cies? What­ev­er the bak­ing goal, the bil­na and chow­ki will pro­vide the so­lu­tion.

Emer­gen­cies and dis­as­ters can strike quick­ly and with­out warn­ing can force you to evac­u­ate your schools, neigh­bour­hood or even con­fine you to your home.

Long be­fore there were blenders and food proces­sors, the sil and lorha were used for grind­ing sea­son­ings such as gar­lic, pep­pers, pi­men­to, etc. It was typ­i­cal­ly used in the mak­ing of var­i­ous types of chut­ney, par­tic­u­lar­ly co­conut chut­ney. If you’ve nev­er had co­conut chut­ney with your dou­bles, with your cur­ry or with your nor­mal Tri­ni street food, you are sad­ly miss­ing out. No wor­ries though, here’s the recipe so you can make it your­self.

As the say­ing goes “the on­ly con­stant is change”. Even though change is in­evitable, it does not make it any eas­i­er for us to ac­cept. Big changes such as a di­vorce, death of a loved one or loss of a job can be dif­fi­cult for many adults to cope with. These changes are es­pe­cial­ly dif­fi­cult for our chil­dren whose young brains are still de­vel­op­ing. While they may not be able to ex­press ver­bal­ly that they are hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ty with a change, you may be able to rec­og­nize it by their re­ac­tions and changes in emo­tions.