Dakarai Smith, the first of Bermuda's quintuplets to graduate from high school, has been back at the city of his birth preparing for an exciting new stage of his life.

Dakarai was in Washington DC to sit the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) necessary for entry into most US colleges and universities. He and his siblings, who were born at Howard University Hospital (HUH) in 1991, were promised free tuition at Howard University by then President Franklyn G. Jenifer.

If he meets Howard's entrance requirements, he will begin studies there this autumn, something that he has been working towards for about ten years. "My dad was the first person to tell me about the scholarship at Howard. I believe I was between six and ten at the time.

"So I had something to strive for. I knew that my college was taken care of so all the rest was up to me — I just have to get there."

While Dakarai's educational path has not been entirely traditional — he left The Berkeley Institute to finish high school at the C.A.R.E. (Children and Adults Reaching for Education) Learning Centre — he has always been motivated by his dream of going to Howard and confident of his own abilities.

"I'm a born leader", he said. "I've always been considered to be a leader by my teachers."

Since graduating from C.A.R.E. last summer — ahead of his former classmates at the Berkeley Institute — Dakarai has been taking college preparatory courses under the guidance of a private tutor and is determined to pursue a Business major. "I want to specialise in insurance," he said. "And I most definitely want to come back home to work."

He is also looking forward to extra-curricular activities.

The teenager, who made his debut for Boulevard Blazers' premier team last year, dreams of representing Howard on the football field as well.

"Soccer is my number one. I plan on playing for the soccer team when I go Howard."

Don't expect to see him play for another team in Bermuda though — his devotion to Blazers, for whom his brother also plays, is clear. "I've been playing for Blazers since I was seven. I don't think I would play for anyone else in Bermuda," he said.

The quintuplets, Dakarai, Makiri, Makesi, Raziya and Marjani were delivered via caesarean section at 29 weeks.

Although the quints defied the odds by surviving infancy, Dakarai's brother Makesi died at 21 months, after having suffered with what is believed to be pneumonia. Their birth was a first for Bermuda, and remarkable even in the United States, where prior to the Smiths, the last set of quintuplets born to survive infancy were delivered in 1963.

According to Dr. Lennox Wesley, Chairman of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Howard when the Smiths were born, the birth of quintuplets was extremely rare. "About one birth in every five million are quints," he said.

While Dakarai has come far from the three-and-a-half-pound baby delivered almost 18 years, he is reluctant to accept credit for his achievements himself.

"I commend my parents for everything," he said. "Without them, we wouldn't be here. The family structure and their principles taught us all to be better people in life.

"Everything is thanks to them. I'm looking forward to graduating and showing them my degree. The satisfaction is for me and them. All my rewards go to them. They believed in me. They never gave up on me."

Premier Dr. Ewart Brown, himself a Howard alumnus, offered his best wishes to Dakarai on gaining admission to the university, saying he believed it to be a great place to come of age.