Bri­an Lon­don has carved his name in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s cul­tur­al land­scape, but he has al­so worked be­hind the scenes with young peo­ple who as­pire to be­come ath­letes.

With­in the quaint south­ern com­mu­ni­ty of Gon­za­les Vil­lage, Guapo, is a team that’s been nur­tur­ing and de­vel­op­ing young foot­ballers for over two decades. Up­ris­ing Youths Foot­ball Club and Acad­e­my con­tin­ues to make its mark not just in its com­mu­ni­ty, but across the coun­try.

The faith­ful in Fe­lic­i­ty are prepar­ing for what or­gan­is­ers say will be the largest Ganesh Ut­sav cel­e­bra­tion in the 19-year his­to­ry of the Fe­lic­i­ty Ganesh Ut­sav Fes­ti­vals Com­mit­tee (FGUFC), with this year’s 12-foot mur­ti of Lord Ganesh al­ready in place at the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s head­quar­ters.

As has now be­come cus­tom­ary, Ma­yaro-based com­mu­ni­ty ac­tivist Oliv­er Alexan­der was up and about ear­ly last Mon­day, the first day of the new school year, check­ing on trans­porta­tion arrange­ments for stu­dents mak­ing their way to the area’s eight schools.

Bow legs (med­ical­ly called genu varum) are a con­di­tion in which a child’s legs curve out­ward at the knees. When a child with bow legs stands, their an­kles may touch but their knees re­main apart.

We all mis­place keys, oc­ca­sion­al­ly walk in­to a room and for­get why we came, or for­get a name. The mem­o­ry lapse is part of be­ing hu­man. De­men­tia is dif­fer­ent.

Have you no­ticed that many more women are go­ing un­der the knife? But not for the rea­son you’d typ­i­cal­ly think. They now want small­er breasts, not big­ger ones—dri­ving a surge in re­duc­tion surg­eries both in­ter­na­tion­al­ly and here at home.

For many peo­ple, the num­bers on the scale mat­ter more than any­thing - so much so that they’ve built their en­tire self-im­age around a spe­cif­ic weight. How­ev­er, obe­si­ty and weight man­age­ment spe­cial­ist Dr Bri­an Chadee is chal­leng­ing that mind­set by re­plac­ing shame with per­son­alised care, ex­er­cise, and a deep­er look at the per­son be­hind the weight.

In Trinidad and To­ba­go, you don’t al­ways need a long ex­pla­na­tion to make a point. Some­times all it takes is a “mon­key know what tree to climb.” To a for­eign­er, it might sound like gib­ber­ish, but we un­der­stand it is an ob­ser­va­tion about hu­man be­hav­iour. Peo­ple are well aware of who they can push around and who they can­not.

Some have de­bat­ed the ori­gin of Black Pow­er, whilst oth­ers have ques­tioned if it was a rev­o­lu­tion.

Last De­cem­ber, African singer/record­ing artist Tan­do N’Ko­su re­leased the spo­ken-word/at­mos­pher­ic track and al­bum project, I Am Africa (stylised I Am Afri­ka), which per­son­i­fies the African con­ti­nent as an eter­nal, di­vine moth­er. It speaks about the land, its peo­ple, and its heart­beat – cel­e­brat­ing African her­itage, na­ture, and iden­ti­ty.

When the sweet strings of a cu­a­tro ring out, fol­lowed by the deep bass of the bass box and the fa­mil­iar shake-shake of mara­cas, there is no mis­tak­ing the sig­nal. Add the beloved lyrics of ‘Sereno, Sereno’ or ‘Ale­gría, Ale­gría’, and it could on­ly mean one thing—parang is here! And right along­side it comes Sep­tem­ber: Parang His­to­ry Month.