Health

“[…] If it was unsafe for schools to stay open, why were the non-essential businesses allowed to stay open with the workers exposed to the same risk? “[…] We must consider whether these weather alerts are reaching the population—especially in rural areas—and are they being understood? […]” The following Letter …

With the proposed 2022-2023 budget having been laid in Parliament, a lot of Trinbagonians have been forced to be more circumspect in how they spend their precious dollars, especially as many public sector workers are still earning at pre-2104 rates! Nevertheless, something has happened to us even before this budget …

“[…] I have no difficulty with the working journalists reporting the news as they find it, whether positive or negative… My concern is with the columnists and the  established letter-writers. “I am suggesting that you devote at least one of your contributions per month to a positive message—something that will …

“[…] We had fun doing Zoom meetings in our boxer shorts, out of sight of the camera; but some realised that they’d mostly prefer to do work stuff from an office. In long pants, preferably.  “Some missed the water cooler moments, where they could talk about what Ian Alleyne had …

“Pan? Pan my ass! Sat say once that UNC people have dholak and sitar and tabla and tassa; they don’t want no pan!” “Morning, breds,” I had greeted Prakash cheerily as he stepped into the street just as Bobby and I were passing his house on Friday morning. “Yuh hear bout …

I’ve come to believe that what I had thought to be a vicious bout of both acid reflux and one of my lifelong afflictions, bronchitis, was really some form of Covid. By the time it occurred to me that it might be, it was too late for a conclusive test; …

“[…] There are no economic findings that I’m aware of, on how much the country loses by having a significant proportion of its workforce stuck in traffic every day. But there’s widespread recognition that there’s an economic cost, and that it’s probably a steep one. “For much of the past …

Old men are the worst. They see the world as theirs to do whatever they please. No matter the circumstance of birth, they have been conditioned to believe in their inherent superiority.  They din born so. They were taught so. By the time they are old enough to have sense, …

When I was 16, I got a job as the receptionist at a small printery on Sellier Street in St Augustine. It was not my first job—I’d left school the year before and had worked briefly at two or three places since.  One of the Seafood Enterprises outlets occupies that …

Inside Madeo’s mini mart, the place in Aranjuez where I buy dahi, a tray with eight breadfruits the size of grapefruits sat on the counter. I had never seen such small ones being offered for sale, but since Madeo was always keen to market unusual fare, I was intrigued.  They …

Bird peppers turned up everywhere. You didn’t have to plant them; they took root wherever they were dropped off by their bird friends.  Small and innocuous looking, they were hot—none of the warning signs like scotch bonnets, whose succulent exteriors were a fire alarm. My younger brother, at four, was …

I have had a lifelong love for curries. When I was a child, my favourite meal was rice, dhal and curried chicken. It was actually the rice and the curried chicken, but we were made to have the dhal on it.  It felt like an interloper, interrupting the concentrated taste …