When peo­ple think of pre­his­toric gi­ants, Hol­ly­wood’s Juras­sic Park usu­al­ly comes to mind. Trinidad and To­ba­go, how­ev­er, of­fers a re­al­i­ty far clos­er to the Ice Age.

Every land­mark event starts with a dream­er. For Ch­aguara­mas, that dream­er was Edgar Tripp, an in­no­va­tor who em­i­grat­ed from Eng­land around 1870. Af­ter work­ing as a book­keep­er and es­tate man­ag­er, Tripp mar­ried Amelia, daugh­ter of William Sanger Tuck­er—own­er of the La Cue­sa Es­tate and Mac­queripe Bay—in 1876. Though Amelia passed away in 1879, Tripp launched his busi­ness ca­reer in Port-of-Spain with the back­ing of his fa­ther-in-law.

The on­line pro­gramme dis­cussed mon­u­ments and re-en­act­ments in the Gir­mi­tiya in­den­tured In­di­an di­as­po­ra. It ex­plored how mon­u­ments, memo­ri­als and his­tor­i­cal re-en­act­ments shape col­lec­tive mem­o­ry in the di­as­po­ra. In coun­tries such as In­dia, Fi­ji, Mau­ri­tius, Réu­nion, South Africa, Guyana, Suri­name, and Trinidad and To­ba­go, com­mu­ni­ties have cre­at­ed phys­i­cal and per­for­ma­tive spaces to com­mem­o­rate the his­to­ry and ex­pe­ri­ences of in­den­tured labour­ers and their de­scen­dants. By ex­am­in­ing these sites of re­mem­brance, the dis­cus­sion high­light­ed how her­itage, iden­ti­ty and cul­tur­al re­silience have been pre­served and trans­mit­ted across gen­er­a­tions.

“…Al­bert Gomes fad­ed from na­tion­al con­scious­ness… His suc­cess­es are for­got­ten…” This analy­sis by Je­re­my Tay­lor, in 2004 in Caribbean Beat, ac­cu­rate­ly de­picts the man­ner in which a fight­er for the voice­less and dis­pos­sessed has been rel­e­gat­ed to the dust­bin of Caribbean his­to­ry.

In homes across Trinidad and be­yond, her voice and writ­ings have long been a fa­mil­iar pres­ence—in the­atre halls, on vil­lage stages, and in the qui­et spaces where cul­ture is re­mem­bered, re­vived and reimag­ined.

World Steel­pan Day 2026 will be cel­e­brat­ed on to­mor­row with a full day of per­for­mances, an An­ces­tral Walk and a ma­jor youth show­case at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah.

As Panazz: The Sto­ry is cel­e­brat­ed in Wash­ing­ton, DC, on Tues­day to mark World Steel­pan Day, for­mer Panazz leader and mu­si­cal di­rec­tor Bar­ry Bartholomew is re­flect­ing on the un­like­ly jour­ney that trans­formed a Har­vard school as­sign­ment in­to an in­ter­na­tion­al­ly ac­claimed doc­u­men­tary.

The Jew­ish ex­pe­ri­ence of slav­ery and be­ing in a strange land threat­ened to re­move the Lord’s song from their lips. As they sat on the shores of the Eu­phrates Riv­er in Baby­lon, they wept over their forced cap­tiv­i­ty and the bleak un­cer­tain­ty of their fu­ture.

As Trinidad and To­ba­go cel­e­brates World Steel­pan Day on Au­gust 11, recog­nis­ing the on­ly acoustic mu­si­cal in­stru­ment in­vent­ed in the 20th cen­tu­ry, the con­ver­sa­tion in­evitably turns to the fu­ture. If you want to know if the fu­ture of the na­tion­al in­stru­ment is se­cure, look no fur­ther than the qui­et, lush agri­cul­tur­al vil­lage of Biche in east Trinidad.

Tech­nol­o­gy may have been the rea­son every­one gath­ered, but it was the con­ver­sa­tions, con­nec­tions and un­for­get­table culi­nary ex­pe­ri­ence that made the evening one to re­mem­ber.

Life has a way of sur­pris­ing us. One day every­thing seems to be mov­ing ac­cord­ing to plan. The next, a job ends, a re­la­tion­ship falls apart, an op­por­tu­ni­ty dis­ap­pears, or a dream you’ve worked tire­less­ly to­wards sud­den­ly slips away. In those mo­ments, it is easy to be­lieve that the closed door is the end of the jour­ney. But his­to­ry, and life it­self, teach­es a dif­fer­ent les­son. A closed door is of­ten not a pun­ish­ment. It is a redi­rec­tion.

For USM­NT (US Men’s Na­tion­al Team) and FC Dal­las de­fend­er Shaque­ll “Shaq” Moore, giv­ing back to com­mu­ni­ties through sport has been a ma­jor high­light of his ca­reer.