Malaysian duri­an or­chard own­er Stephen Chow’s work­ers spend hours in the fields in the dead of night, don­ning head­lamps to col­lect fresh­ly ripened fruit cov­et­ed by Chi­nese con­sumers. But the hard work may not be enough to keep Chow out of the red.

Long be­fore mod­ern kitchens were equipped with so­phis­ti­cat­ed ap­pli­ances and recipes could be sum­moned with the tap of a smart­phone, Trinida­di­an cooks had a sim­ple but dis­tinc­tive way of trans­form­ing hum­ble veg­eta­bles in­to in­tense­ly flavoured dish­es.

If there is a sand­wich as­so­ci­at­ed with child­hood and pri­ma­ry school lunch­es, it has to be the Peanut But­ter & Jel­ly (PB&J).

One look at the hon­ey bar­be­cue chick­en sand­wich­es, dou­ble choco­late ba­nana bread or pep­per roti pies on Joshua Greene’s In­sta­gram and your stom­ach may start talk­ing back.

At the south­west­ern­most edge of Trinidad, where the road seems to run out be­fore the pos­si­bil­i­ties do, lies a part of the coun­try that re­mains large­ly un­known to many Trinida­di­ans.

Stand­ing ma­jes­ti­cal­ly at the top of Mayo Road in the Cen­tral Range, the his­toric Our La­dy of Montser­rat Church looks out across the land­scape as if keep­ing watch over the com­mu­ni­ties be­low.

World Sui­cide Pre­ven­tion Day is ob­served an­nu­al­ly on Sep­tem­ber 10. The in­ter­na­tion­al theme for 2024 to 2026 is “Chang­ing the Nar­ra­tive on Sui­cide.” It seems mun­dane to ask the ques­tion: “How are you?” but if your gut tells you some­thing is wrong, ask again.

De­hy­dra­tion does more than make peo­ple thirsty. It can place ad­di­tion­al strain on the heart and car­dio­vas­cu­lar sys­tem, par­tic­u­lar­ly when flu­id loss be­comes sig­nif­i­cant.

Chil­dren’s feet are quite dif­fer­ent from adult feet and legs. Adult-ori­ent­ed doc­tors of­ten mis­di­ag­nose nor­mal tod­dler feet as be­ing “flat” and “ab­nor­mal”, when they are per­fect. For ex­am­ple, the arch­es. Adult feet have three arch­es which func­tion as a spring mech­a­nism to sup­port body weight, ab­sorb shock, and help you move ef­fi­cient­ly. Arch­es usu­al­ly form by the time the child is 3 or 4 years old. Un­der the age of three, chil­dren do not have arch­es. That is nor­mal.

“Near­ing death and death are nat­ur­al, healthy and bi­o­log­i­cal el­e­ments of the life cy­cle,” ex­plains Cross­roads Hos­pice and Pal­lia­tive Care (CH­PC), head­quar­tered in Tul­sa, USA.

Amid the mod­ern hus­tle of Port of Spain’s trans­for­ma­tion in­to a bustling com­mer­cial hub, Tran­quil­li­ty Methodist Church stands as a sig­nif­i­cant land­mark and a qui­et, en­dur­ing sen­tinel of the city’s past. Nes­tled at the cor­ner of Tra­garete Road and Vic­to­ria Av­enue, the strik­ing ed­i­fice is a phys­i­cal tes­ta­ment to a com­mu­ni­ty’s re­silience and a rich his­to­ry stretch­ing back more than two cen­turies.

For more than six decades, Dr Su­ru­jrat­tan Ram­bachan has used his voice to car­ry Hin­du de­vo­tion from vil­lage tem­ples to packed sat­sangs, ra­dio and tele­vi­sion au­di­ences – and in­to char­i­ta­ble caus­es across Trinidad and To­ba­go.