Cur­rent prob­lems fac­ing Caribbean uni­ty are part of a tur­bu­lent past in which dreams of re­gion­al sol­i­dar­i­ty nev­er ma­te­ri­alised. At­tempts at uni­ty were made in the 1950s to cre­ate an en­ti­ty- Fed­er­a­tion.

More than a cen­tu­ry ago, in the streets of Port-of-Spain, peo­ple seek­ing re­lief from ill­ness could find them­selves mov­ing be­tween worlds.

In the late 1930s, the west­ern gate­way in­to Port-of-Spain was a treach­er­ous ex­panse of tidal man­grove swamp and marsh­land.

For trav­ellers look­ing to ex­pe­ri­ence a dif­fer­ent side of Trinidad, a vis­it to the Nar­i­va Swamp of­fers an op­por­tu­ni­ty to leave the bus­tle of every­day life be­hind and en­ter one of the coun­try’s rich­est nat­ur­al en­vi­ron­ments.

Ex­change Vil­lage Mud Mandir, al­so known as the Se­wala Mandir in Cou­va and ded­i­cat­ed to Lord Shi­va, is con­sid­ered one of the longest-oc­cu­pied tem­ples in the coun­try.

Even as they faced winds “strong like a ty­phoon,” hun­gry sharks cir­cling their ship, an oil leak and a mal­func­tion­ing com­pass, so­ca singer Snakey and pro­duc­er Alex “SandX­i­la” Aird com­mand­ed the rag­ing seas all the way to the 2026 Grena­da Pow­er So­ca Monarch fi­nal, where they an­chored down on the ti­tle.

In April, Dr Sher­rise Sandy, MBBS (UWI), FR­C­Path (UK), sat one of med­i­cine’s most de­mand­ing pro­fes­sion­al ex­am­i­na­tions, be­com­ing the first can­di­date from Trinidad and To­ba­go to com­plete the Fel­low­ship of the Roy­al Col­lege of Pathol­o­gists, the FR­C­Path, as an ex­ter­nal can­di­date, with the en­tire­ty of her train­ing com­plet­ed at Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

The Trinida­di­an na­tive, who now lives in An­tigua, had even put to­geth­er a spe­cial birthing playlist—trib­al, spir­i­tu­al and pri­mal sounds she wouldn’t usu­al­ly lis­ten to on a reg­u­lar day.

By day, Kel­lian Suepaul teach­es physics at Man­zanil­la Sec­ondary School. By night and on week­ends, she trans­forms in­to Kelly­Sue, a ver­sa­tile singer and band­leader cap­ti­vat­ing au­di­ences with per­for­mances span­ning rock, pop, reg­gae, R&B, so­ca and Bol­ly­wood mu­sic.

In April, Dr Sher­rise Sandy, MBBS (UWI), FR­C­Path (UK), sat one of med­i­cine’s most de­mand­ing pro­fes­sion­al ex­am­i­na­tions, be­com­ing the first can­di­date from Trinidad and To­ba­go to com­plete the Fel­low­ship of the Roy­al Col­lege of Pathol­o­gists, the FR­C­Path, as an ex­ter­nal can­di­date, with the en­tire­ty of her train­ing com­plet­ed at Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

The na­tion­al flag fea­tures red, white and black colours, sym­bol­is­ing the coun­try’s vi­tal­i­ty and uni­ty.

Aimee Bois­selle loves the sounds of the un­der­wa­ter world, par­tic­u­lar­ly the bioa­coustics of ma­rine ecosys­tems.