Di­ag­nosed with cere­bral pal­sy at birth years ago, doc­tors ini­tial­ly said Josi­ah At­i­ba Man­dela Thomas may nev­er walk or talk.

To­day, how­ev­er, Thomas, now 18, a for­mer stu­dent of Rio Claro East Sec­ondary School, is cel­e­brat­ing at­tain­ing six sub­jects in the Caribbean Sec­ondary Ed­u­ca­tion Cer­tifi­cate (CSEC).

Beat­ing the odds has not been an easy task for him but Josi­ah has proven that he has the strength, de­ter­mi­na­tion and will pow­er to over­come his chal­lenges. 

“To be hon­est, I had some ups and downs but I keep the faith. I was pray­ing un­til ex­am re­sults came up. I was pray­ing to God, say­ing Lord I want ones, twos and threes. Look at where I am to­day. I am very proud to see how many sub­jects I got,” beamed Josi­ah yes­ter­day.

He re­ceived Grade 1 in In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy, Grade Two in In­te­grat­ed Sci­ence and Prin­ci­ple of Busi­ness and Grade Three in Eng­lish, Prin­ci­ple of Ac­counts and Cloth­ing and Tex­tile. He did not pass Math­e­mat­ics but in­tends to re­peat Eng­lish and Maths, as well as pur­sue A-Lev­els in In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy.  

Thomas thanked his teach­ers, teach­ing aid, friends and fam­i­ly for their sup­port, but said his moth­er Sharon Thomas, 57, has been the dri­ving force be­hind his suc­cess.

When he was born, Josi­ah could not move his hands, which were curled against his chest and his feet were po­si­tioned in a pe­cu­liar an­gle. He has since un­der­gone four surg­eries, a den­tal surgery, speech ther­a­py and phys­io­ther­a­py.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia at their Robert Vil­lage, Table­land home Sat­ur­day, his proud moth­er, a house­wife, said she has been “run­ning” with him since his birth, which was ex­haust­ing, but she steered the course.

“I start run­ning from birth and I had the de­ter­mi­na­tion. I say God send him like this, I know one day God will call me home and I want him to be able to take care of him­self.”

Thomas at­tend­ed the Princess Eliz­a­beth Cen­tre in Wood­brook and then at age six was en­rolled in the Poole RC Pri­ma­ry School in Rio Claro. About a month be­fore his CSEC ex­ams, how­ev­er, he fell, chipped the bone in his an­kle and had to wear a cast. 

“I was un­able to at­tend school for April and some of the days in May. I took that time to study. It did not keep me back from do­ing my ex­ams,” he said.

“De­scrib­ing him­self as pos­i­tive and a jovial per­son, Josi­ah, who fol­lows the In­de­pen­dent Bap­tist faith, said he draws his strength from God. Un­able to write prop­er­ly, Josi­ah typed most of his notes on his lap­top in class. He al­so moved around in school in his wheel­chair, as he can­not walk for long dis­tances with­out as­sis­tance.

“The school is very good. They have wheel­chair ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty. I did not have much chal­lenges it had one or two chil­dren who will pick on me but I did not re­al­ly take it on,” he said.

“I am that type of per­son. I am al­ways on a pos­i­tive note, so I don’t re­al­ly let the neg­a­tiv­i­ty both­er me. I like to in­spire oth­ers.” 

Af­ter he fin­ish­es school he wants to pur­sue a ca­reer in on­line trad­ing, but his dream is to one day open his own com­put­er re­pair busi­ness. 

His moth­er said most days she spent ap­prox­i­mate­ly $70 in trav­el­ling to and from his school.

“One day I just spent the day in Rio Claro sit­ting on a bench wait­ing for him to fin­ish school to bring him home be­cause I did not have much mon­ey to trav­el,” she re­called.

To com­pound mat­ters, Thomas said ear­li­er this year So­cial Ser­vices cut the spe­cial needs grant say­ing she was no longer qual­i­fied for it. Thomas, how­ev­er, ad­vised par­ents with chil­dren with dis­abil­i­ties to nev­er give up on their chil­dren.

Josi­ah al­so of­fered words of ad­vice to per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties,

“Don’t let it stop you from go­ing to­wards your goal. Take for me ex­am­ple, I suf­fer from cere­bral pal­sy. The doc­tor said I could not walk, I could not talk, now look at where I am to­day. I fin­ish sec­ondary school and I have six pass­es un­der my belt. So that goes to show that once you have the de­ter­mi­na­tion and have God on your side any­thing is pos­si­ble.” Josi­ah, who al­so lives with his fa­ther Ju­nior, a car­pen­ter, and broth­er Joshua, 21, al­so called for more ramps, or even es­ca­la­tors and el­e­va­tors, in schools and oth­er es­tab­lish­ments to make them ac­ces­si­ble for phys­i­cal­ly chal­lenged peo­ple.

Con­grat­u­lat­ing Josi­ah on his suc­cess, Moru­ga/Table­land MP Dr Lovell Fran­cis said his achieve­ment was due to sheer grit, de­ter­mi­na­tion, hard work and sup­port of his lov­ing and ded­i­cat­ed moth­er.