Bo­bie-lee Dixon

Un­wa­ver­ing sup­port from fam­i­ly mem­bers and good friends was all the en­cour­age­ment Reynold Vish­nu Ojah Reesal need­ed to pur­sue his dream of be­com­ing a lawyer.Born with a cleft palate he de­fied the odds and con­sis­tent­ly evad­ed the neg­a­tive and at times hurt­ful crit­i­cisms from those who said he was crazy to tag such a ca­reer with a dis­tort­ed speech."I was called to the bar on April 15, 2011," said a proud Reesal who still has a speech im­ped­i­ment even af­ter hav­ing over ten surg­eries done."I think I cre­at­ed his­to­ry in T&T be­com­ing the first per­son with a cleft palate to prac­tise law. I know there was a vi­su­al­ly-im­paired lawyer and a hear­ing-im­paired lawyer, but I don't think there was ever one with a speech im­ped­i­ment," he added.

It was for me

Reesal, who re­sides in Kel­ly Vil­lage, Ca­roni, the area in which he grew up, re­vealed he al­ways want­ed to be­come a lawyer and af­ter see­ing his fa­ther, a land own­er, deal with le­gal is­sues on many oc­ca­sions, he knew his ca­reer was go­ing to be in the field of law.He even­tu­al­ly at­tend­ed and grad­u­at­ed from the In­sti­tute of Law and Aca­d­e­m­ic Stud­ies with a law de­gree, sub­se­quent­ly ob­tain­ing a Le­gal Prac­tice Cer­tifi­cate (LPC) from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Stafford­shire in Lon­don.Asked what his ex­pe­ri­ence was like at­tend­ing uni­ver­si­ty, Reesal stat­ed:"I have to say I have had most­ly pleas­ant days at school and uni­ver­si­ty. There were the odd mo­ments but I al­ways had the sup­port of my teach­ers and lec­tur­ers," not­ed Reesal."It was their en­cour­age­ment that made push my­self hard­er."

On the way up

Look­ing at Reesal now, you can­not tell he was even born with a cleft palate, but get­ting to his present ap­pear­ance was not an easy ride."I had my first surgery done at five years old at the Princess Eliz­a­beth Home. Both my first and last surg­eries were very trau­mat­ic for me."In my first surgery I woke up be­fore the pro­ce­dure was com­plet­ed. Al­though there was no pain, I re­mem­ber see­ing a lot of blood on my hands when I touched my stom­ach."I will nev­er for­get hear­ing one of the doc­tors say that I couldn't be hu­man be­cause I was so calm for a five-year-old wak­ing up in the mid­dle of a surgery."My last surgery left me with a pinched nerve in my neck that left the en­tire left side of my body paral­ysed. At first the doc­tors didn't know that a nerve was pinched and so I spent more mon­ey try­ing to find out what was caus­ing the paral­y­sis than I paid for the ac­tu­al surgery. "Even­tu­al­ly they re­alised that a nerve was pinched dur­ing the surgery that caused the paral­y­sis. It wasn't un­til three years that I ful­ly re­cov­ered. Dur­ing that time, though, at­tend­ing uni­ver­si­ty was dif­fi­cult be­cause I of­ten suf­fered ex­cru­ci­at­ing pain if I sat down too long or in a par­tic­u­lar po­si­tion."I am hap­py to say to­day I feel a lot bet­ter and I am able to car­ry out my prac­tice like any oth­er lawyer. I re­al­ly feel in­de­pen­dent and sat­is­fied that I ac­com­plished my goal," Reesal ar­tic­u­lat­ed.

A phil­an­thropist

Reesal, who be­lieves strong­ly in giv­ing back and help­ing oth­ers, has re­mained com­mit­ted to do­ing char­i­ta­ble work in his com­mu­ni­ty for less for­tu­nate fam­i­lies. He al­so con­tin­ues to fi­nan­cial­ly sup­port the Princess Eliz­a­beth Home, where he first got his help."I un­der­stand what is like to have chal­lenges, so wher­ev­er I could help I would."Cur­rent­ly at­tached to Vashist Ma­haraj and As­so­ciates, and with as­pi­ra­tions to one day op­er­ate his own prac­tice, the re­al es­tate lawyer says: "Go af­ter your dreams and if you have the sup­port of your im­me­di­ate fam­i­ly...well, then you have all the sup­port you need."