In April, Dr Sher­rise Sandy, MBBS (UWI), FR­C­Path (UK), sat one of med­i­cine’s most de­mand­ing pro­fes­sion­al ex­am­i­na­tions, be­com­ing the first can­di­date from Trinidad and To­ba­go to com­plete the Fel­low­ship of the Roy­al Col­lege of Pathol­o­gists, the FR­C­Path, as an ex­ter­nal can­di­date, with the en­tire­ty of her train­ing com­plet­ed at Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

From the dance floor to the gym­nas­tics mat, ath­let­ics track and cul­tur­al per­for­mances, the San Juan teenag­er has spent most of her life de­vel­op­ing the dis­ci­pline, con­fi­dence and cre­ativ­i­ty that now pre­pare her for one of the biggest op­por­tu­ni­ties of her young life.

More than four decades af­ter a nine-year-old Machel Mon­tano trav­elled from Trinidad and To­ba­go to Brook­lyn to de­vel­op his craft, the so­ca star’s jour­ney is re­turn­ing to the bor­ough, this time as the sub­ject of a ma­jor cul­tur­al ex­hi­bi­tion.

For Nicholas Deabreau, the steel­pan is more than mu­sic. It is the force that set his cre­ative life in mo­tion.

Be­yond un­de­ni­able pro­fi­cien­cy and the de­liv­ery of qual­i­ty mu­sic, Akua Lei­th be­lieves the fu­ture of the steel­pan will de­pend on some­thing far more fun­da­men­tal than the avail­abil­i­ty of met­al, drums, or even mar­kets.

Aimee Bois­selle loves the sounds of the un­der­wa­ter world, par­tic­u­lar­ly the bioa­coustics of ma­rine ecosys­tems.

At Las Cuevas, the colours of Trinidad and To­ba­go take on a fash­ion­able new ex­pres­sion in Bel­mont de­sign­er Saleem Samuel’s lat­est swimwear col­lec­tion, Love Coun­try.

From the hives to the jar, hon­ey has been part of 16-year-old Sari­ah Sara Ma­haraj’s fam­i­ly sto­ry. Now, she is build­ing on her fam­i­ly’s bee­keep­ing tra­di­tion with a busi­ness of her own and a new prod­uct she calls “Hot Hon­ey”.

On Thurs­day, Au­gust 6, lo­cal leg­end of song, Mavis John de­liv­ered what many hint­ed as the de­noue­ment in her long con­cert per­for­mance and record­ing ca­reer to a se­lect au­di­ence at Kil­lar­ney (Stollmey­er’s Cas­tle) in Port-of-Spain. This per­for­mance event, Shh­mu­sick, close­ly fol­lowed Gary Car­dinez’s Steel & Voic­es Trib­ute con­cert to her at Kafé Blue fea­tur­ing a hand­ful of singers, and the icon her­self, reimag­in­ing her vast reper­toire of is­land pop songs from her cat­a­logue go­ing back to the 1960s.

Wood­land has be­come syn­ony­mous with flood­ing, ris­ing rivers and the strug­gles of res­i­dents, but not many know about the won­ders of the com­mu­ni­ty—a place of qui­et rivers, misty morn­ings, hid­den is­lands, man­grove forests and birds that have found refuge in the South Oropouche wet­lands.

At the south­west­ern tip of Trinidad, where the land meets the sea, Ce­dros has pre­served a tra­di­tion that car­ries with­in it cen­turies of faith, sac­ri­fice, mi­gra­tion and cul­tur­al re­silience.

Re­open­ing a bar at a time when es­tab­lish­ments are clos­ing down left, right and cen­tre re­quires a cer­tain amount of au­dac­i­ty. Mario Sargeant has plen­ty.