Chester Sam­bra­no

AS­JA San Fer­nan­do Sec­ondary School stu­dent Se­bas­t­ian Ram­saran, 17, re­mained in shock yes­ter­day af­ter re­ceiv­ing his CSEC re­sults.

Against the odds, Se­bas­t­ian got five 1s (Math­e­mat­ics, Ad­vanced Math­e­mat­ics, Bi­ol­o­gy, Chem­istry, Physics) and two 2s (So­cial stud­ies, Ge­og­ra­phy).

“Orig­i­nal­ly, I thought is this my re­sults, is it I who did this?” he beamed.

Ram­saran was born with Op­tic Nerve At­ro­phy, a con­di­tion that se­vere­ly im­pacts his eye­sight.

“Ba­si­cal­ly, the op­tic nerve that leav­ing my eyes is dam­aged, not all the in­for­ma­tion that comes in­to my eye gets re­layed to my brain,” Ram­saran ex­plained.

It means that his vi­sion is ap­prox­i­mate­ly five per cent of what a per­son with nor­mal eye­sight would have.

The con­di­tion didn’t make life easy for him grow­ing up and even pre­sent­ed learn­ing chal­lenges when he en­tered sec­ondary school.

How­ev­er, he be­gan to re­ly heav­i­ly on his hear­ing, touch and oth­er sens­es.

“I couldn’t see the board so I had to use binoc­u­lars to see the board to ac­tu­al­ly take down notes, I couldn’t see my text­book, I had a next de­vice I used to mag­ni­fy the text,” he said.

But even in the face of ad­ver­si­ty, he per­se­vered.

“I al­ways want­ed to make my par­ents proud, I want­ed to make my­self proud, I al­ways want­ed to prove the peo­ple who say I couldn’t do it wrong,” Ram­saran said.

But notwith­stand­ing any neg­a­tiv­i­ty sur­round­ing him, Ram­saran said he was blessed to have teach­ers who went above and be­yond to help him, friends who cared, the T&T Blind Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion which as­sist­ed and par­ents who did every­thing to sup­port him.

He called their love un­con­di­tion­al.

“They helped me re­gard­less of any­thing peo­ple said or did. Their sup­port meant the world and means the world to me,” he said.

Out­side of the class­room, Ram­saran al­so man­aged to keep him­self busy by play­ing the key­board af­ter de­vel­op­ing a love for mu­sic.

He al­so plays sev­er­al sports and has even ex­celled in mar­tial arts.

“Any­thing is pos­si­ble no mat­ter who you are, no mat­ter what po­si­tion you are in; with hard work and de­ter­mi­na­tion and love and sup­port, you can achieve any­thing no mat­ter what peo­ple say about you,” he said.

Se­bas­t­ian’s fa­ther, Alon­zo Ram­saran told Guardian Me­dia, “Every­one else may be sur­prised but we are not sur­prised.”

He said he and his wife nev­er had a doubt that their son would have done well and would con­tin­ue to do so.

“He has what I would con­sid­er per­fect vi­sion but he doesn’t have a good eye­sight,” Ram­saran Sr said.

As it re­lates to his fu­ture plans, Se­bas­t­ian now wants to pur­sue CAPE sub­jects fol­lowed by ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion ei­ther lo­cal­ly or abroad. He then wants to be­come an en­gi­neer or any­thing re­lat­ing to sci­ence.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, T&T Blind Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer Ken­neth Suratt ex­tend­ed con­grat­u­la­tions to Se­bas­t­ian.

“There are so many neg­a­tive is­sues sur­round­ing young peo­ple these days and Mr Ram­saran’s suc­cess shows that where there is a will there is a way,” Suratt said.

Suratt said Se­bas­t­ian did not let his blind­ness pre­vent him from suc­ceed­ing.

“Chil­dren who are blind have to func­tion in an ablest school sys­tem where the Spe­cial Ed­u­ca­tion De­part­ment of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion is un­der­fund­ed, lack of trained teach­ers to teach chil­dren who are blind and lit­tle to no re­sources to teach con­cepts. Yet chil­dren who are blind are achiev­ing,” he added.

Suratt al­so said a dis­abil­i­ty grant is not an op­tion.

He al­so im­plored that peo­ple use Se­bas­t­ian’s suc­cess to in­spire peo­ple who are blind to ex­ceed their ex­pec­ta­tions.