“Doc, I just doh know what to do. I doh have any mon­ey com­ing in, I can’t feed my fam­i­ly, the rent due, the bills pil­ing up. I un­der plen­ty pres­sure. I feel­ing like I fail­ing my fam­i­ly. I feel­ing like less than a man” – Tim (not his re­al name), a pa­tient of mine in clin­ic says to me when I try to get down to the core is­sue of his prob­lem. I feel his pain.

Alone, I screamed, shout­ed, and cried, “Why me?” The thought of my chil­dren grow­ing up with­out me, won­der­ing if I had done enough to make sure that they would be tak­en care of. Tears com­ing to my eyes at wed­dings, birth­days and grad­u­a­tions, all these oc­ca­sions for which I may be ab­sent…

Car­la and Ricky hand their vac­ci­na­tion cards to the Wel­come Re­cep­tion­ist. In­side the restau­rant, wait­ers smil­ing­ly serve well-spaced out groups of cus­tomers.

In the re­mote sea­side vil­lage, an­oth­er day drifts to a close. In­tense sun­shine gives way to cool­ing ocean breezes. Tired women walk home car­ry­ing bags of gro­ceries; chil­dren kick an old foot­ball. El­ders sit on their front porch­es, watch­ing as vol­un­teers chat with res­i­dents about the COVID-19 vac­cine. Be­neath the charm of this place lies an­oth­er, more un­set­tling sto­ry. In­creas­ing­ly, gen­er­a­tions of fam­i­lies are dy­ing from coro­n­avirus. Why? Re­fusal to take the vac­cine.

Vic­tim XX* 18 years lat­er af­ter her mur­der, they still hold on to her favourite scarf, though her scent from it has fad­ed, her par­ents say “hold­ing it takes them back”, and re­turns them to her cheer­ful smile. Eigh­teen years lat­er, there is still no jus­tice or even heal­ing for this fam­i­ly.

Car­la was wor­ried. Late­ly, her aunt had been com­plain­ing about headaches, heart pal­pi­ta­tions, feel­ing ex­treme­ly tired and hav­ing trou­ble con­cen­trat­ing. At first, Car­la sus­pect­ed that Aun­ty Jean was de­pressed af­ter los­ing her broth­er and nephew to COVID-19. How­ev­er, af­ter two months and sev­er­al tests lat­er, Aun­ty Jean’s doc­tors still could not ex­plain what was wrong.

“So doc, you mean, I can’t smoke at the cor­ner with my ‘pad­na’ and keep the mask at the side?” A ques­tion that baf­fled me on the ra­dio pro­gramme, The Lunchtime Doc­tor, when the caller asked in a se­ri­ous tone. It brought to my sud­den re­al­i­sa­tion that aware­ness was still ne­ces­si­tat­ed in 2021, dur­ing a pan­dem­ic; How harm­ful smok­ing is, more­so the risks of Lung Can­cer and how we can pre­vent it. Ac­cord­ing to our lo­cal sta­tis­tics, Lung Can­cer is con­sid­ered the dead­liest can­cer in the Caribbean (15.3% of all can­cer re­lat­ed deaths).

“Most of the world’s 3.4 bil­lion work­ers are un­well,” as stat­ed in the Glob­al Well­ness In­sti­tute (GWI) re­search re­port on The Fu­ture of Well­ness at Work, five years ago. To­day, 2021, dur­ing the un­prece­dent­ed pan­dem­ic of COVID-19, where our world is chang­ing at an in­com­pa­ra­ble pace, there is a ris­ing epi­dem­ic of the un­well, stressed work­force where anx­i­ety, burnout, em­ploy­ee dis­en­gage­ment and eco­nom­ic in­se­cu­ri­ty plagues our glob­al pop­u­la­tion.

In the ear­ly morn­ing, a nurse walks quick­ly, head bent, head­ing to the hos­pi­tal. In the dis­tance, the creak­ing of a garbage col­lec­tion truck an­nounces its ar­rival. San­i­ta­tion work­ers fling bags of rub­bish in­to the cav­ernous open­ing. The mech­a­nism clos­es, swal­low­ing all ev­i­dence of hu­man waste. In the su­per­mar­ket, work­ers pack bags of gro­ceries for those who pre­fer not to ven­ture in­to the world of the virus.

Writ­ing about 19th cen­tu­ry Port-of-Spain, the his­to­ri­an Suzanne Good­e­nough quotes the words of colo­nial town plan­ners from 1871 de­scrib­ing the ex­pan­sion of Port-of-Spain and the first glimpses of hous­ing on Wood­brook Es­tate.

For over 10 years—be­tween 1987 and 1998—Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus Ken­neth Ram­c­hand’s T&T Guardian col­umn, ‘Mat­ters Aris­ing’, was re­quired read­ing for any­one with an in­ter­est in na­tion­al and glob­al pub­lic af­fairs, lit­er­a­ture, scholas­tic dis­course and clever ole-talk and hu­mour.

First Cit­i­zens is set to cel­e­brate its mar­quee Women’s Con­fer­ence on No­vem­ber 14, well renowned for its sus­tained pres­ence and im­pact­ful con­tent.