Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

In a dis­play of love and ad­vo­ca­cy, the par­ents of a tod­dler are us­ing her unique jour­ney as a bea­con of hope for chil­dren. Camille and Cedel Hinds say they are not al­low­ing their daugh­ter Cyd­ni’s con­di­tion, which af­fects one of her legs, to be a stum­bling block.

At first glance, you’d nev­er think that the two-year-old’s en­er­getic and un­bro­ken strides were once ma­jor hur­dles. Her moth­er Camille said she on­ly learnt about her daugh­ter’s med­ical con­di­tion—ani­somelia or short-leg syn­drome—short­ly be­fore giv­ing birth.

“Ac­tu­al­ly two weeks be­fore hav­ing Cyd­ni I found out that she was go­ing to be born with her left leg short­er than the right, mean­ing that her fe­mur wasn’t able to de­vel­op dur­ing preg­nan­cy,” Camille said.

She fur­ther ex­plained that ani­somelia was rare, af­fect­ing one in every 200,000 women. For some, the con­di­tion crip­ples their chances of liv­ing an ac­tive life. How­ev­er, for Camille and Cedel, their daugh­ter’s des­tiny was nev­er go­ing to be de­ter­mined by a dis­abil­i­ty.

“I am teach­ing her to be brave, strong. I am teach­ing her to walk in­de­pen­dent­ly and do things on her own so that she does not need to ask for help and have peo­ple pity her. I want peo­ple to say that be­cause of this chal­lenge she does not even show it is a prob­lem,” said the moth­er.

Camille and Cedel, who live in San Fer­nan­do, have since em­barked on a mis­sion to spread aware­ness about their daugh­ter’s con­di­tion.

“I want when per­sons see Cyd­ni they don’t have star­ing eyes. One ques­tion some­one asked me at a play park was if I broke the child’s leg, I even re­mem­ber when she was a ba­by and we went to the hos­pi­tal and some­one asked me what hap­pened to her, what break?”

Camille said it is im­por­tant her daugh­ter is able to nav­i­gate the world with con­fi­dence.

“I don’t see any of it as a chal­lenge, I see it as aware­ness and some­thing I want to bring aware­ness to, some­thing I want to ed­u­cate peo­ple about. I live around a lot of kids and they know about Cyd­ni and they treat her so well and in­clude her in all ac­tiv­i­ties,” she said.

De­ter­mined to em­pow­er Cyd­ni and en­cour­age un­der­stand­ing, Camille and Cedel, both sec­ondary school teach­ers, chan­nelled Cyd­ni’s tale of re­silience in­to sto­ry­telling, with a book called Cyn­di’s Spe­cial Leg.

“I don’t plan to treat her any dif­fer­ent, I want her to go to any school, a preschool just like nor­mal it has noth­ing like home­school­ing. I want her to have the life of a pri­ma­ry school (child) just like I did. The life of writ­ing SEA, pass­ing for a sec­ondary school, know­ing the hard work you have to put in.

“So that when I do some­thing like this, like her book which is en­ti­tled Cyd­ni’s Spe­cial Leg, I am go­ing to then ed­u­cate peo­ple,” said Camille.

The book, which is ex­pect­ed to be launched next month, is aimed at break­ing down bar­ri­ers around chil­dren with chal­lenges and pro­mot­ing in­clu­siv­i­ty.