Wellness

Chapter 3: Paid and Paid … This journey has taught me so many lessons—the importance of savings and insurance being two of them. When my mom passed away in 2002, the hardships associated with her illness and her subsequent funeral were evident. I was already employed at the time, and …

“[…] I stand here not just for myself, but for every young professional drowning in rent, every couple delaying marriage because they can’t afford a place to live, every parent lying awake wondering if their child will ever own a home. “Trinidad and Tobago is in a housing crisis: 77% …

Little things add up—sometimes, they can sneak up insidiously so that we don’t see them coming until something happens. It’s not that signs haven’t been there, it’s that they don’t seem important enough for us to take note. Take the recent situation when Dr Joel Teelucksingh, a newspaper columnist, who …

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to speak with two truly inspiring members of the Cocoa Research Centre (CRC) at The UWI: Professor Pathmanathan Umaharan, its head, and Dr Darin Sukha, its food technologist. I met them 16 years ago, when I started working at the university as …

It’s a little bit uncanny that I had wanted to return to discussing trauma, particularly the impact of bullying, before the issue raised itself vehemently in the public space. The story of five years of alleged physical abuse at St Mary’s College suffered by a student, who was expelled when …

Chapter 2 – Lost my Double Ds… Surgery day came faster than I thought it would. In the days leading up, I busied myself preparing for my absence at work—handover, early report preparation, updates, and generally tying up loose ends. In the weeks prior, my doctor had updated us based …

I never forgot the last time that I saw Imran Khan—my former St Mary’s College classmate, not the cricketer. We were on the second floor of the school one morning, and I heard a buzz in the corridor. I looked up to see Imran walking towards me with a blood-stained …

Roughly 16 years ago, I interviewed Dr Dan Ramdath, a professor of Biochemistry at The UWI, about the efficacy of olive oil, given its superstar status as a healthy food. He is currently the director of research and a clinical research scientist (Human Nutrition) at the Guelph Research and Development …

Today, when I look around in the world, what do I see?/ I see footprints that man has left on the sand/ While walking through time./ I see fruits of our ambition, figments of our imaginations/ And I ask myself, When will it end? When will it end?/ It is …

When Professor Emeritus Arnold Rampersad spoke to graduating students of the Faculty of Humanities and Education at The UWI in 2009, he drew their attention to the notion of Self. Casting himself in the role of a “scholar-critic committed to biography and autobiography” (for which he is globally acclaimed), he …

Chapter 1: Tiny Weird Identifiable Lump (TWIL)… TWIL showed up in April—or rather I found TWIL in April. It is strange because self-exams were not a routine for me even though I knew the importance. I always had dense tissue and would get an annual ultrasound just to make sure …

Last Wednesday, a letter to the editor appeared in the Express that was so poignant it made me abandon what I had intended to write. Exactly 25 years ago today, Daniel Bertie’s father, Trevor, was shot and killed by bandits in St Clair. “I remember everything. I remember his last …