When you look at Wayne Caines and Dwayne Caines today, it seems hard to believe that a teacher once grimly predicted they would one day find themselves working on the back of a trash truck.

Wayne is chief executive officer at Digicel, Dwayne is Police Media Relations Manager and they are both leaders in the community.

The pair have just released a book about their life called Double Vision: A Journey to Success. The book details the highs and lows of being young black males growing up in Bermuda, and also the special challenge of being twins.

“We have always been each other’s best friend and each other’s worst enemy,” Dwayne said.

The brothers have already signed hundreds of copies of Double Vision in the United States. They plan a book signing for Bermuda and then will go on to sign in Kingston, Jamaica, in the summer.

“We have a big family and our mother is a storyteller,” Wayne said. “Every weekend we get together and talk about when we were young. Dwayne and I thought this might be a critical opportunity for us to tell our story. We wanted to put the fun part together with the challenges we have had.”

The brothers said they really wanted the book to inspire other young people who may be struggling or feeling unempowered.

“We talk about Bermuda from the perspective of how idyllic it was when we were young, but also the challenges of young men being raised in a community where you had all the guessing and self-doubt dealing with the challenges of being misunderstood,” Dwayne said.

In school, the Caines brothers flew under the radar academically and were double trouble when it came to mischief. One of their worst pranks was stealing communion bread from a church and drinking the communion wine.

“We’re not proud of that,” Dwayne said. “Our mother was horrified when she found out what we’d done.”

They were raised on Shelton Road in Devonshire, which was an interesting junction between “the back of town” and the more economically privileged side of Bermuda. “We had to manoeuvre between both worlds,” Dwayne said.

They were part of a family of four, with an older sister, Sherine, and a younger brother, Travis. Their mother, Shurnett, is originally from Jamaica, and their father, Michael, is Bermudian but has roots in St Kitts. They recalled that growing up in a household with a strong West Indian background meant a tradition of sticking together no matter what.

Although their father was an integral part of their lives growing up, they largely credit their mother with their success in life.

“Our mother fought for Wayne and I,” Dwayne said. “She advocated for us. We had low self-esteem because we were dark-skinned and in Bermuda it wasn’t popular to be dark-skinned at that time. Our mother is our hero. She did everything in her power to make sure Dwayne and I didn’t fall through the cracks. There was an element in this country that was telling us we would not amount to anything. One of our school teachers told us we would end up on the back of a trash truck.”

Dwayne is quick to add: “Not that there is anything wrong with working on a trash truck; it is honest work.”

Wayne said that as twins they struggled to establish their own identities.

“There is an abnormal pressure on twins,” he said. “You can see it from the very nature of our names, Dwayne and Wayne. When people came to us it was never ‘Dwayne did well in school’ or ‘Wayne did well’. It was ‘the twins did well’. We didn’t get two birthday cakes, we were always treated as a duo. While we were very close, there came a point where we didn’t want to be around each other. We had never been separated from each other.

“One time I wanted to stay at the house of a friend. My mother said I couldn’t stay there unless my brother came with us. The friend called my mother and begged if it could just be me. I was 14 and so angry that as a human being I could not be out of someone’s presence. She did not want us to be apart. She wanted us to be together in everything.”

Dwayne said that this was in part out of a sense of trying to protect them. Their mother felt they were stronger together than apart.

They both attended Oakwood College in Alabama, but did not really start to straighten up, academically, until sophomore year.

“We are no different than the one in four black Bermudian males who are not graduating from high school,” Wayne said. “If you look at the 2009 Mincy Report on education, the report says that 50 per cent of young black males in Bermuda leave high school before graduating. Even though our education was 20 or 30 years ago, we were part of the group of young men who struggled. We were not focused on school. I graduated high school with a 2.0; I barely had the grades to finish high school.”

Wayne admitted that he struggled in university and it was not until the end of sophomore year that a perceptive college professor noticed that he showed signs of dyslexia. It is not a disorder that affects Dwayne and Wayne recalls that discovering that he suffered from dyslexia, and gaining a better understanding of how he learned, allowed him to finally get serious and excel.

Wayne and Dwayne said they are both very different in personality and outlook, which made co-writing a book, an interesting experience.

“We have different writing styles,” Wayne said. “Dwayne is a marketeer and is a creative writer. His writing is much more flowery. I am a lawyer so I am used to technical writing. When I write, it is a lot more rigid.

“It was a nightmare for us to put our thoughts together. Dwayne thought I should be more emotive and I thought he should be a lot more academic. We were in the creative process and it was very frustrating for us to do it together. We had different ideas. Through the process of labouring, writing and arguing, we were pleased and humbled by the end result.”

Dwayne added: “Our hope is that someone’s life will be changed by our story. We want someone having a difficult time in life to be inspired. Ultimately, there’s nothing special about us. If two boys like us from the back of town can make it, so can anyone else with hard work, perseverance and determination.”

Wayne said: “We believe everyone in Bermuda can better their circumstances. We feel honoured and blessed that the book is starting to take off.”

The brothers will be doing a book signing on Thursday at 6.30pm at Brown & Co. For more information about the book, e-mail info@cainesbrothers.com.