Mu­si­cian, for­mer pan­nist and for­mer sec­ondary school teacher, Mar­cus C Bap­tiste MA, BA, CFM, said he had two big dreams, and when they ma­te­ri­alised, it was amaz­ing.

In the days be­fore the new aca­d­e­m­ic year be­gins, the quest for books, uni­forms and shoes con­tin­ues. Health is of­ten ig­nored but a child who is ex­haust­ed, hun­gry, anx­ious, de­hy­drat­ed or strug­gling to see the board can­not suc­ceed.

Wak­ing up in the ICU can be a ter­ri­fy­ing ex­pe­ri­ence. You’re un­sure of what’s hap­pen­ing, you don’t know what your chances of sur­vival are and you’re pos­si­bly in pain. But, in ad­di­tion to prop­er med­ical treat­ment, the kind­ness, ex­tra care and con­sid­er­a­tion shown by staff can pro­vide great ease. And this was the re­al­i­ty for one Ari­ma nail tech­ni­cian at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

The hu­man body is an amaz­ing piece of work. It reg­u­lates your tem­per­a­ture, heals a cut and keeps the heart beat­ing while you are asleep. It is al­so down­right strange.

For some rea­son, peo­ple al­ways laugh when I ask if their child snores.  “Of course he does; he like his fa­ther” is the com­mon an­swer. 

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s rep­u­ta­tion as a home for tal­ent­ed or­chid breed­ers con­tin­ues to grow, with lo­cal breed­er Cur­tis Lutch­man and his team re­turn­ing from Flori­da with an im­pres­sive haul of awards.

As the red, white and black flag was raised at mid­night on Au­gust 31, 1962, Trinidad and To­ba­go had al­ready de­cid­ed on a na­tion­al flag, coat of arms, na­tion­al an­them and na­tion­al flower. But there was one cru­cial el­e­ment not yet es­tab­lished: a cur­ren­cy of its own.

High fash­ion took cen­tre stage at South Park Plaza in May dur­ing its Moth­er’s Day Fash­ion Show, bold­ly ti­tled “A Trib­ute to the Time­less Woman.”

As Trinidad and To­ba­go moved from colony to in­de­pen­dent na­tion, women were not mere­ly on the side­lines. Through po­lit­i­cal or­gan­is­ing, civic ed­u­ca­tion, com­mu­ni­ty work and elec­toral pol­i­tics, they helped lay the ground­work for the coun­try that emerged in 1962. Long be­fore 1962, women in po­lit­i­cal spaces such as Au­drey Jef­fers and El­ma Fran­cois, among oth­ers, laid the cru­cial ground­work for fe­male or­gan­is­ing, cam­paign­ing and vo­cal­is­ing what coun­try they want­ed to in­her­it.

The mid­night hour that sig­nalled T&T’s in­de­pen­dence has been re­count­ed count­less times. But the road to that his­toric mo­ment was paved long be­fore the clock struck twelve, shaped by a re­lent­less se­ries of meet­ings, metic­u­lous plan­ning and com­mit­ment.

Whether flown in packed sta­di­ums at lo­cal foot­ball games, car­ried through the streets dur­ing re­gion­al Car­ni­val pa­rades or draped across the shoul­ders of Olympic ath­letes on glob­al podi­ums, the na­tion­al flag rep­re­sents Trin­ba­go.

Mu­sic pe­ri­od at Preysal Sec­ondary School is nev­er just an or­di­nary class. An­dre Fred­er­ick, who teach­es steel­pan to Forms One to Five, en­sures it is an en­joy­able ex­pe­ri­ence filled with prac­ti­cal life lessons.