Michelle Loubon

The Holy Month of Ra­madan has brought a spe­cial bless­ing for St Au­gus­tine Girls' High School stu­dent Nadimah Mo­hammed. Mo­hammed, 18, is one of two stu­dents who copped the Pres­i­dent's Gold Medal in three sub­jects–chem­istry, lit­er­a­tures in Eng­lish and French.

The oth­er is Chan­tal Cave, of St Joseph's Con­vent in Port-of-Spain. In the Cape ex­am­i­na­tions, Mo­hammed got nine dis­tinc­tions. Yes­ter­day, cel­e­bra­tion raged like wild­fire at SAGHS, and the Mo­hammed clan in El So­cor­ro. Ac­com­pa­ny­ing Mo­hammed to her al­ma mater at Evan Street, Curepe, was her moth­er Lystra Mo­hammed, a for­mer pay­roll clerk at Trinidad Pub­lish­ing Co Ltd. The younger Mo­hammed said: "I am ec­sta­t­ic. I am thank­ful to my fam­i­ly, teach­ers and par­ents and my fa­ther (sports com­men­ta­tor) Fazeer Mo­hammed. It has not sunken yet." From all ap­pear­ances, it was a rou­tine day for Mo­hammed–at­tend­ing school at UWI and prepar­ing for mosque in the evening. She is purs­ing a BSc in psy­chol­o­gy with a dou­ble mi­nor in in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions and so­ci­ol­o­gy. She wor­ships at the Nur-e-Is­lam mosque in El So­cor­ro.

Mo­hammed said: "A friend called my mom and told my mom about it. Then we be­gan lis­ten­ing to it on the ra­dio. Then my prin­ci­pal Kath­leen An­der­son called and this is how I con­firmed it." But for a mo­ment, re­al­i­ty hit. "My mom and my sis­ter Ame­nah start­ed to cry. My grand­moth­er Re­beekah Mo­hammed start­ed to cry. It was an emo­tion­al mo­ment. We couldn't be­lieve the bless­ing that had come from Al­lah." At SAGHS, every­one was wait­ing with open arms to con­grat­u­late her. The feat had not been re­peat­ed since stu­dent Karen De Fre­itas took gold in the sci­ence cat­e­go­ry in 1991. Mo­hammed said: "The prin­ci­pal called an as­sem­bly. She was run­ning down the cor­ri­dor. She was jump­ing for joy. My teach­ers are so hap­py for me. "They are hap­py it is the Eng­lish and lan­guages field. The sci­ences tend to get more pres­tige in dif­fer­ent sec­tors of so­ci­ety. "My friends be­gan call­ing my cell­phone. 'Is it true? Con­grat­u­la­tions!'"

Strat­e­gy for suc­cess

Quizzed on her strat­e­gy for suc­cess, Mo­hammed said: "It's a lot of ded­i­ca­tion. I have a lot of pas­sion for what I did. When I chose my com­bi­na­tion, peo­ple were won­der­ing what sense does it make to do those three sub­jects. I can't per­form at my best un­less I love what I am do­ing, or I won't do it." While she de­vel­oped a nat­ur­al ap­ti­tude for chem­istry, she found lit­er­a­ture a bit chal­leng­ing. "I am a bit of a cram­mer. For the fi­nal Cape ex­ams, lit­er­a­ture was the great­est chal­lenge...It took a lot of notes, prac­tis­ing writ­ing es­says and analysing," Mo­hammed said. "For French, it was prac­tis­ing orals and be­com­ing fa­mil­iar with the book...study­ing to in­ter­nalise it. I love chem­istry. But I had to put in ex­tra hours."

She paid ku­dos to her French teacher Paul Car­ring­ton for how he brought the text to life. She said: "I was able to un­der­stand what the au­thor brought across. I grew to love chem­istry be­cause of Joanne Ma­hadeo. I have to thank my lit­er­a­ture teach­ers Shar­da Ram­sun­dar and Car­olyn Har­nanan. The two of them were an amaz­ing team. I have to thank vice-prin­ci­pal Kather­ine Ba­hadur." Cou­pled with her dili­gence, Mo­hammed paid ku­dos to her par­ents for set­ting her on the path to aca­d­e­m­ic prowess. She said: "My par­ents Lystra and Fazeer are my best friends. I think they bal­ance each oth­er nice­ly. My fa­ther is very much in­to acad­e­mia. He's wit­ty and chal­lenges me to think crit­i­cal­ly. We dis­cuss the is­sues. "My moth­er is sup­port­ive and ded­i­cat­ed to my sis­ter (an­oth­er SAGHS stu­dent) and I. She has giv­en her life to us. They are tru­ly my he­roes."