Eigh­teen-year-old Jahdiel Dun­can re­ceived the Prin­ci­pal’s Award and a spe­cial award for In­te­grat­ed Sci­ence from his school for his dili­gence in prepa­ra­tion for the Caribbean Sec­ondary Ed­u­ca­tion Cer­tifi­cate (CSEC) ex­am­i­na­tion.

But these awards are not just a tes­ta­ment to his aca­d­e­m­ic prowess but of his strong will and de­ter­mi­na­tion, in the face of what may seem to be in­sur­mount­able chal­lenges.

Jahdiel has cere­bral pal­sy.

But he nev­er al­lowed his phys­i­cal chal­lenges to de­fine him as an in­di­vid­ual or pre­vent him from achiev­ing his goals.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at his Her­mitage Vil­lage, La Ro­main home Thurs­day, the La Ro­main Sec­ondary School grad­u­ate said proud­ly, “I al­ways tell my­self I am not spe­cial, I am a nor­mal per­son, de­spite the phys­i­cal chal­lenges I might face. I al­ways like to make peo­ple un­der­stand that I am not spe­cial, that I have the abil­i­ty to do any­thing.”

The teenag­er ad­mit­ted that his aca­d­e­m­ic jour­ney was not smooth, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing the pan­dem­ic when there were no phys­i­cal class­es be­cause he did not have a teacher’s aide.

He would ask his sub­ject teach­ers to send the notes for him to print and stick in his books. For­tu­nate­ly, when phys­i­cal school re­sumed he was pro­vid­ed with a teacher’s aide Whit­ney Har­ryper­sads­ingh—who he said helped him a great deal.

“I was so hap­py for that,” he said.

Jahdiel wrote sev­en sub­jects, in­clud­ing Math­e­mat­ics, Eng­lish, prin­ci­ples of busi­ness, prin­ci­ples of ac­counts, in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy, so­cial stu­dents and in­te­grat­ed sci­ence.

He in­tends to write the Caribbean Ad­vanced Pro­fi­cien­cy Lev­el ex­am­i­na­tion. He said he was not sure whether or not he would at­tend uni­ver­si­ty, but his goal is to be­come a suc­cess­ful busi­ness own­er.

Jahdiel had no idea that he was re­ceiv­ing any awards. He re­called that when the prin­ci­pal Ra­jesh Sir­jue spoke about a stu­dent who faced many chal­lenges and nev­er missed any class­es, he still had no idea he was speak­ing about him.

“When he called my name I felt emo­tion­al. I felt like cry­ing. I felt very hap­py,” Jahdiel re­called.

Thank­ing God for giv­ing him the strength to forge ahead, he said, “Every day I would pray and ask God to guide me and keep me go­ing.”

Jahdiel al­so thanked his par­ents Tisha and Kurt Dun­can, for al­ways push­ing him and be­liev­ing in him. While many young peo­ple look for en­ter­tain­ers as role mod­els, he said his role mod­el was his un­cle Lester Ram­nanan, fond­ly called Lester B, who al­ways en­cour­aged him to reach for the stars.

Sport­ing a bright smile, Jahdiel said he al­so has an­oth­er role mod­el.

“My oth­er role mod­el is my­self. I be­lieve that I have the abil­i­ty to do what my heart de­sires and to go for my goals. I be­lieve I can achieve more than just col­lect­ing awards in school. My biggest goal is to open busi­ness­es, truck­ing com­pa­nies, car deal­er­ships,” he said. He rec­om­mend­ed that the au­thor­i­ties in­ject more teacher’s aides in schools to as­sist stu­dents.

Jahdiel en­cour­aged fel­low stu­dents not to fol­low “bad com­pa­ny” or get dis­tract­ed with “love and crush­es”.

“Just fo­cus and be­lieve that you can do it. Every youth can achieve goals. Don’t give up, just push for­ward and you will reach to where you want to go,” he said.

As tears of joy streamed down her face, Jahdiel’s moth­er, a home­mak­er, said that it was a dif­fi­cult jour­ney.

“It was very tough for me. In Trinidad they don’t re­al­ly have much avail­abil­i­ty of aides and they don’t cater for spe­cial needs chil­dren, that is how I see it,” she said.

When Jahdiel start­ed phys­i­cal school, the moth­er said his old­er broth­er Jadon, now 20, was in Form Three. He phys­i­cal­ly sup­port­ed Jahdiel in school.

“He was tak­ing care of him every day to and from school. Af­ter Jadon’s ex­ams, he went back and stayed with him.”

Tisha stayed with him dur­ing his (Jahdiel’s) CSEC ex­ams when Jadon got a job. She re­called that doc­tors told her that he would be a veg­etable and would not live for long.

“I nev­er ac­cept­ed that, just like he nev­er ac­cept­ed his sit­u­a­tion, so I al­ways pushed him,” she said.

Al­though Jahdiel on­ly start­ed walk­ing when he was nine years old, his moth­er said she al­ways treat­ed him like a nor­mal child and be­gan re­search­ing his con­di­tion and ways to im­prove his life.

“I still do re­search to this day look­ing for av­enues to help him,” she said.

Ad­vis­ing par­ents in sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tions to en­cour­age and mo­ti­vate their chil­dren, Tisha al­so urged them to be­lieve in God.

“That’s the on­ly way to get your mir­a­cle. That’s how I got mine. I grew my chil­dren up in the church and pushed them in that di­rec­tion,” she said.

CSEC re­sults are ex­pect­ed to be re­leased on Au­gust 24.