A Rising Academic Star
By Fr. Michael Kyalo, SJ
It is an ordinary school day at Abay Mado Catholic Academy. The horizon appears in unusual brightness like a memorable photo taken at dawn in the early morning light. The school yard is feeling vaguely delirious, spiritual and surreal as if it was approaching something sacred. It was a dawn of a new day. A spectacle unlike any that has ever been witnessed in print before. Abay Mado Catholic Academy is a school that needs no introduction. Just in case you have forgotten, the school is like a hamlet in a picturesque breathtaking landscape, in its sweep and scope with open moorland that enraptures to forested ravines tapping deep into the cascading waters of the Blue Nile. In an area buffeted by vagaries of war and internal conflict, the school is tumultuously in a celebrating mood.
The news about the sterling performance by last year’s grade eight class was like a sound that was heard piercing the stillness, a loud rattle that unfolded with fresh perception and colorful detail. In total, 62 students sat for the exam and achieved a mean score of 74.20968. Abay Mado Catholic Academy clinched the 2nd position out of 56 schools within the City and its outskirts. Among the Catholic schools in the City, Abay Mado was ranked as the best performing school. The current success is not pundit abracadabra but an experience that sparks courage, an experience that intrigues unfettered determination, and an experience that would collide stones to ignition.
To borrow a line from the book, The Talent Code, Daniel Cole insists that, “…greatness isn’t born. It’s grown.” One of the key elements that he points out that teens can profit from is “ignition.” Cole’s unwavering opinion is a motivating factor spurring our students to push themselves beyond the horizon. Many at time, in the shuddering of darkness and silence, bullets rash over us like an express train …not even that can dampen the spirits of the determined souls! After kindling the smoldering embers of midnight oil, the daily tedium finally crystalized to a sparkling thrust of sterling performance. Abay Mado Catholic Academy is gradually scaling the heights in academic agora, rising to the pinnacle of academia in the area. The school is gradually regaining its raison d’etre, a blossom back to the Jesuit tradition of forming men and women for others.
In a 1960, speech at Spell Man College, Martin Luther King Junior said, “If you can’t fly run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.” Time and tide wait for no man. We immortalize the wisdom of Martin Luther King Junior via the Motto of the school: Competence, Integrity and Service for the greater glory of God. It is either do or die, make or break!
