Have you ever had a blind friend say, “You sound pink,” and had to pause for a sec­ond be­cause your brain didn’t quite know where to put that in­for­ma­tion? Once you re­cov­er from the ini­tial con­fu­sion, what they’re usu­al­ly talk­ing about is synes­the­sia, specif­i­cal­ly the ver­sion where sound and colour get a lit­tle too com­fort­able with each oth­er. And be­fore any­one asks, no, it’s not a joke, and no, it’s not some­one try­ing to be po­et­ic for at­ten­tion. For some peo­ple, it’s just how per­cep­tion works.

Once up­on a time, lead­er­ship had a lan­guage. It was mea­sured. It was de­lib­er­ate. It un­der­stood that words, once spo­ken, car­ried weight far be­yond the mo­ment in which they were ut­tered.

The US gov­ern­ment ab­sorbs the best of US civil­i­sa­tion and em­ploys it for war; to de­stroy the his­tor­i­cal sites, in­fra­struc­ture and lead­er­ship of re­sis­tant na­tions. For ex­am­ple, it em­ploys its cut­ting-edge com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nol­o­gy for glob­al pro­pa­gan­da, sub­ju­ga­tion, dom­i­na­tion.

So, the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) is now over and stu­dents can breathe again. Well, at least for the next two to three months, un­til the stress of get­ting their re­sults. We know that SEA has be­come one of the most stress­ful parts of our ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem process in T&T and we can ad­mit that the ex­am needs re­struc­tur­ing. But we al­so need to go deep­er in­to the is­sue and ex­am­ine how we have cre­at­ed an ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem in which too many par­ents be­lieve that on­ly a hand­ful of sec­ondary schools can of­fer a good fu­ture for their chil­dren.

Is it on­ly me, or is every­one amazed at the num­ber of lead­ers try­ing to evade burnout every day at work? The irony is that some of the prac­tices many lead­ers have adopt­ed are com­pound­ing the prob­lem of over­loaded work­loads. One such prac­tice that has be­come nor­malised as a way of busi­ness life is fire­fight­ing one’s way through the day’s tasks.

As we en­ter the fourth week since the Unit­ed States and Is­rael de­clared war on the Is­lam­ic Re­pub­lic of Iran, over 8,000 Iran­ian tar­gets have al­ready been at­tacked. But Iran has been a most re­doubtable op­po­nent. It con­tin­ues to re­spond with drones and mis­siles at US re­gion­al al­lies and, crit­i­cal­ly, has es­tab­lished a stran­gle­hold on one of the world’s most vi­tal wa­ter­ways, the Strait of Hor­muz, threat­en­ing the glob­al econ­o­my with “the worst dis­rup­tion to oil sup­plies in his­to­ry.” The pres­sure is on for a so­lu­tion.

There is a dan­ger­ous si­lence set­tling over T&T. In this case, it is not the si­lence of peace but the si­lence that comes when in­sti­tu­tions be­gin to shift qui­et­ly, al­most im­per­cep­ti­bly, away from the peo­ple they were built to pro­tect.

With two more days till the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) ex­am, I can on­ly imag­ine the anx­i­ety, stress, fear and per­haps even dread. Next year will be my son’s turn. I am not look­ing for­ward to it.

Women’s Month, hinged on the ob­ser­vance of In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day (March 8), al­lows us to re­flect on the progress, chal­lenges and re­silience of women. The 2026 cel­e­bra­tions are un­der the theme “Give to Gain,” em­pha­sis­ing em­pow­er­ment, men­tor­ship and the need to break re­main­ing bar­ri­ers to gen­der equal­i­ty while pro­mot­ing ser­vice and sis­ter­hood. 

Amidst wars and ru­mours of wars, a study of an­cient his­to­ry can help re­mind us that even in the af­ter­math of falling king­doms and con­quered cities, civil­i­sa­tion can be re­built. For the Lenten sea­son, I felt a spot­light on African Chris­t­ian his­to­ry be­fore the Eu­ro­pean colo­nial pe­ri­od would be in­tel­lec­tu­al­ly re­fresh­ing.

US and Is­raeli mil­i­tary ac­tion against Iran is now in its fourth week. The eco­nom­ic im­pact is clear. This is a war of choice, as it is ev­i­dent Iran posed no im­mi­nent threat to the US. Like Iraq, Iran has no weapons of mass de­struc­tion, though Is­rael and the US have nu­clear weapons. The con­se­quences are be­ing felt by Iran and the coun­tries host­ing US bases. The de­struc­tion of up­stream en­er­gy ca­pa­bil­i­ties and the clo­sure of the Strait of Hor­muz are hav­ing glob­al reper­cus­sions.

I want to be Cuban in this col­umn, but I do not know if I am up to the task. I want to par­tic­i­pate in my coun­try’s eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment by im­port­ing from and ex­port­ing to the rest of the world, but 45/47 is stand­ing mas­sive­ly in the way.