Four hearts be­gan beat­ing to one steady rhythm on No­vem­ber 17, 2006.  

Since then, Asia, Abia, Am­era, and Anosia Ab­erdeen have shared the in­sep­a­ra­ble and sa­cred bond of be­ing iden­ti­cal quadru­plet sis­ters. 

Af­ter their SEA ex­ams, the sis­ters from La Canoa, San­ta Cruz went on to at­tend the San Juan North Sec­ondary School, where they ex­pe­ri­enced their most re­cent suc­cess, pass­ing all their sub­jects at CSEC ex­ams.

They said do­ing so was no easy feat.

While they pre­ferred not to share their ex­act grades in the sub­jects, the 17-year-old girls said the ex­ams re­quired a lot of time and ded­i­ca­tion. 

Asia wrote sev­en sub­jects, while Anosia, Abia and Am­era wrote six.

Nev­er los­ing the smile on her face, Abia re­called “It was heav­i­ly stress­ful. I study al­most every day, morn­ing, wake up be­fore the ex­am, study­ing, do­ing past pa­pers, go­ing through every­thing over and over and over and over. The CSEC came and went. It was stress­ful, but I think it was worth the re­sults.” 

Echo­ing her sis­ter’s sen­ti­ments, Asia al­so high­light­ed the regime she com­mit­ted her­self to, in or­der to re­ceive favourable re­sults. 

“CXC was very hard for me. I got up at four o’clock in the morn­ing, re­vise and then re­vise again and re­vise un­til I was tired, un­til I got it. Every­body kept ask­ing me ‘How you could do that girl? You don’t get tired?’

“I just most­ly stud­ied in school. I don’t study at home, on­ly in the morn­ing. I do past pa­pers. Pa­per ones helped me a lot,” she ex­plained. 

Al­though the ex­ams were dif­fi­cult the girls said the ex­pe­ri­ence em­pha­sised the im­por­tance of al­ways putting your best foot for­ward in what­ev­er you do. 

Ac­cord­ing to Am­era, “Keep try­ing, be­cause at the end of the tun­nel, there’s al­ways light, you will al­ways suc­ceed. If you keep try­ing and push­ing, you will suc­ceed. Do those past pa­per ones. Do them. Do them past pa­pers. Don’t stop, don’t stop for any­body, be­cause it’s you who you’re try­ing to im­prove. No­body else but your­self.” 

De­spite the pres­sure that came with the ex­ams, the girls ac­knowl­edged that their re­sults could not have been achieved with­out the re­lent­less ded­i­ca­tion of their com­mit­ted teach­ers. 

Asia fond­ly de­clared “They re­al­ly push. And it was the chil­dren who didn’t come to class or skip class and didn’t work hard enough or give it 100 per cent that didn’t get the sub­jects. But the teach­ers work very hard. They give 100 per cent and even when stu­dents were to skip class, when even two stu­dents come a day, they still push­ing and do­ing the work.” 

They al­so high­light­ed that their al­ma mater, lov­ing­ly re­ferred to as “Book” is in­te­gral to their com­mu­ni­ty.

How­ev­er, the quadru­plet sis­ters be­lieve the school build­ing needs some main­te­nance work and even up­keep­ing and restora­tion to help gen­er­a­tions to come. 

With a sense of pride in her voice, Am­era shared the great­ness she saw in their school.

“Book is a very amaz­ing school, but the school is falling apart... Peo­ple does just talk down the school. The school is an amaz­ing school, best teach­ers, and some of the stu­dents are very smart and in­tel­li­gent. Just the school is falling apart. It needs to build over.” 

De­spite the tri­als of the in­sti­tu­tion, how­ev­er, the girls were grate­ful for the ex­tra time they got to spend with each oth­er. 

“Well, get­ting to grad­u­ate to­geth­er, and then meet­ing up lunch times and some­times, like when Asia and my class were to­geth­er, some­times, if I need­ed to bor­row some­thing, I would go and ask her, or she would come and ask me.” 

But now, af­ter be­ing to­geth­er for al­most two decades, the sis­ters recog­nise it’s time to loosen the ropes they have on each oth­er and start their sep­a­rate jour­neys. 

“We need­ed this. All of us need to go our sep­a­rate paths and find our own self, find where we are with­out each oth­er ... We can­not cling to each oth­er for­ev­er. We can­not stay to­geth­er for­ev­er. We need to go dif­fer­ent paths and find our­selves in­di­vid­u­al­ly. And we’ll al­ways talk. We’ll al­ways be here. We are al­ways a phone call away.” 

Asia has her heart set on pur­su­ing a ca­reer in busi­ness, Abia aims to join the med­ical field, Am­era’s pas­sion is food prepa­ra­tion and Anosia wants to pur­sue an avi­a­tion ca­reer. 

For those now start­ing their aca­d­e­m­ic jour­ney or strug­gling to keep up, the sis­ters had a few words of ad­vice—keep per­sist­ing. 

“If you want to change some­thing, start with your­self. If your friends lim­ing on the block, if your friends skip­ping class­es, don’t fol­low them, sit in the teacher’s class, and you will start to see a change, a dif­fer­ence.” 

Am­era added, “Next ten years, you don’t want to see your­self like a drug ad­dict with five or ten chil­dren in your hand. You don’t want to see them kinds of things hap­pen to your­self. You don’t want to have a man mind­ing you.

“You don’t want to be sell­ing drugs on the road. You don’t want to have them things hap­pen­ing to you. You want to be suc­cess­ful, so keep push­ing and keep go­ing.”  

She al­so ac­knowl­edged that while school is not for every­one, if some­one has a pas­sion they should al­ways per­se­vere and chase their dreams. 

The sis­ters im­plored those who are tempt­ed to fol­low friends and end up on dan­ger­ous paths, to lis­ten to their el­ders and make some­thing good of them­selves.