To­day, March 21, is the In­ter­na­tion­al Day for the Elim­i­na­tion of Racial Dis­crim­i­na­tion. This an­nu­al ob­ser­vance com­mem­o­rates the Sharpeville Mas­sacre in 1960, when po­lice in Sharpeville, South Africa, opened fire and killed 69 peo­ple at a peace­ful protest against apartheid ‘pass laws’.

A cou­ple of weeks ago, I wrote about my trip to Fla­va Vil­lage and the sub­tle ways dis­abled adults are some­times treat­ed like chil­dren. At an event where al­co­hol flowed freely, none was of­fered to guests who were, for all in­tents and pur­pos­es, VIPs.

At 5.30 each morn­ing, 12-year-old Joshua wakes up, not be­cause he wants to, but be­cause he has to. He bare­ly got six hours of sleep. By 7 am, he is sit­ting at a desk in school. Through­out the day, he is told to study, fo­cus, re­vise, pre­pare. Some­times he stays in dur­ing lunchtime. Some­times he gives up his break time to fin­ish his work. Af­ter school, there are lessons. When he gets home, there is home­work and more past pa­pers to do.

“En­large the place of your tent … do not spare; length­en your cords, and strength­en your stakes.” (Isa­iah 54:2, NKJV)

At six o’clock one morn­ing not too long ago, a woman sat qui­et­ly out­side a pub­lic clin­ic with a num­bered card in her hand.

In the T&T busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment, is there a lead­er­ship prob­lem, or a medi­oc­rity prob­lem, or both? When I in­ter­act with busi­ness­es in T&T, I am struck by the vac­u­ums that ex­ist in both ar­eas. Of course, there are busi­ness­es for which this ques­tion is ir­rel­e­vant. They are mas­ter­ing the me­chan­ics of great lead­er­ship and sus­tained ex­cel­lence. As a re­sult, both their cus­tomers and their em­ploy­ees feel seen, heard and val­ued. This is the foun­da­tion on which busi­ness growth and sus­tained rev­enue streams are built.

There are mo­ments in med­i­cine that nev­er be­come rou­tine. For me, one of them is sit­ting across from a pa­tient and telling them they have can­cer.

Stay­ing fo­cused on my goals of peace and in­tro­spec­tion this Lenten sea­son is prov­ing more dif­fi­cult than in pre­vi­ous years. Even though I have de­lib­er­ate­ly slowed down my life, the strug­gle against an anx­ious mind per­sists, but it comes up against a back­ground of proven tri­umph. I know I will be al­right.

On March 8, 2026, Trinidad Ex­press colum­nist Suni­ty Ma­haraj pub­lished a col­umn dis­cussing Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s at­ten­dance at the Shield of the Amer­i­c­as Sum­mit at Trump Na­tion­al Do­ral Mi­a­mi and the sign­ing of the so-called “Do­ral Char­ter” to com­bat drug car­tels in Latin Amer­i­ca.

Two weeks ago, the Privy Coun­cil re­fused the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s chal­lenge to a Court of Ap­peal mat­ter al­low­ing de­fault judg­ment in favour of the nine men ac­cused of mur­der­ing Vin­dra Naipaul-Cool­man.

US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump op­er­ates with the non­cha­lance of one who knows he is the most pow­er­ful man in the world. With a slash of his pen, he can bring na­tions to their knees as eas­i­ly as he can up­lift them. No­tably, our most pow­er­ful cit­i­zen, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, was a beam­ing fan­girl when Pres­i­dent Trump gave her the ac­tu­al mark­er he used to sign the Procla­ma­tion of the Amer­i­c­as Counter-Car­tel Coali­tion (“The Shield of the Amer­i­c­as”). She was the on­ly fe­male leader in at­ten­dance, and he spent con­sid­er­able time es­tab­lish­ing the dis­tinc­tion and his pref­er­ence for “Kam­la” over the sim­i­lar­ly named “Ka­mala (Har­ris),” the De­moc­rats’ 2024 pres­i­den­tial can­di­date whom he de­feat­ed.

West In­dies has won the Men’s Crick­et World Cup twice, but they did not win it this time, much to my dis­ap­point­ment and weari­ness of spir­it. Like Daren Sam­my, I had ful­ly ex­pect­ed us to win, giv­en our ex­pe­ri­ence and tal­ent ac­quired in fran­chise crick­et over the years across the globe. But, as it turned out, oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al play­ers, save for the men of In­dia, had al­so ac­quired ex­pe­ri­ence and tal­ent. So it was not sur­pris­ing that they did not make the grade, though I risk dis­re­spect­ing the In­di­ans, giv­en the clear ev­i­dence of the quan­ti­ty and qual­i­ty of their prepa­ra­tion by them­selves.