St Fran­cois Girls’ Col­lege grad­u­a­tion at Hy­att Re­gency, Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain, on Ju­ly 2.

“I pray every day and night,” said the man who is stead­fast in his be­lief that laugh­ter is good for the soul and be­ing able to make peo­ple laugh and make their day lighter and brighter is a gift from God.

The in­au­gur­al Get­CAPSS Caribbean Her­itage Awards de­liv­ered a time­ly re­minder last week­end that the Caribbean’s great­est ex­port is not sim­ply its mu­sic, cui­sine or Car­ni­val tra­di­tions, but the iden­ti­ty its peo­ple car­ry with them wher­ev­er they go.

Un­der the are­na lights in ‘The World’s Bor­ough”, his­to­ry un­fold­ed in re­al time as Kesthe­Band de­liv­ered a sold-out, cin­e­mat­ic per­for­mance at the 13,000-ca­pac­i­ty For­est Hills Sta­di­um in Queens, New York, on June 27. The Trin­bag­on­ian group is the first so­ca band to ever head­line and ful­ly sell out the leg­endary venue on its ac­claimed Roots, Rock, So­ca Tour, turn­ing one of New York’s most icon­ic stages in­to a thun­der­ous cel­e­bra­tion of Caribbean sound, cul­ture and uni­ty.

The Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA), Port-of-Spain, tem­porar­i­ly trans­formed in­to a rain­for­est as the Yu­ma Mas Band show­cased their Car­ni­val 2027 se­lec­tion of cos­tumes, heav­i­ly in­spired by na­ture and trop­i­cal wildlife.

How many house­holds still swiz­zle callaloo, leave meat overnight in the slow cook­er to have it falling off the bone the next day, or make buss up shut by hand on a tawa? We’re will­ing to bet not many.

For some peo­ple, cheese­cake is an ac­quired taste; for oth­ers like Crys­tal Sylvester, it was love at first bite, and a re­la­tion­ship that con­tin­ues to grow sweet­er with time.

Wood smoke drifts lazi­ly through the coun­try­side, car­ry­ing with it the com­fort­ing aro­mas of fresh­ly baked bread, bub­bling piz­za and food pre­pared the way gen­er­a­tions once knew—over fire, in clay, and with pa­tience.

If you grew up in the rur­al heart­lands of Trinidad and To­ba­go, your first su­per­mar­ket wasn’t an air-con­di­tioned aisle - it was the bush. Long be­fore im­port­ed ap­ples and grapes be­came every­day sta­ples, a coun­try­side child­hood meant roam­ing the hills, armed with a long bam­boo rod and a sharp eye, for­ag­ing for sea­son­al trea­sures.

Tucked among the rolling hills off the SS Erin Road in the Pe­nal/Debe re­gion lies Phillip­ine, a com­mu­ni­ty whose his­to­ry stretch­es from colo­nial sug­ar plan­ta­tions to the heart of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s po­lit­i­cal life.

As the af­ter­noon sun be­gins its slow de­scent over the Gulf of Paria, vis­i­tors make their way along the nar­row cause­way lead­ing to one of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s most trea­sured land­marks.

Scroll through so­cial me­dia to­day, and you may be bom­bard­ed by ag­gres­sive fit­ness con­tent cre­ators with their gru­elling, com­plex di­ets and work­out rou­tines. But fit­ness in­struc­tor Sha­reef Ali is dif­fer­ent, in­spir­ing all gen­er­a­tions to un­lock their mo­bil­i­ty, one stretch at a time.