Ailing pupil beats them all in Lamu

The top girl in KCPE exams in Lamu County, Amina Abdul Faraj, scored 400 marks.

The Lamu Stone Town Academy student received the news of her success while in Saudi Arabia where she is being treated for a chronic skin ailment.

Amina, 15, hopes to join Alliance Girls and later study engineering.

She is the last born in a family of three raised by her grandparents after her parents relocated to Saudi Arabia in search of greener pastures while she was still a toddler.

Amina stayed focused and disciplined despite ill health.

Mr Lali Shosi and Mrs Amina Aboud, who are Amina’s maternal grandparents, said the girl was industrious.

She would wake up at 2am everyday to study and arrive at school at 6am.

“We are happy for her well-deserved success. She worked hard for it and we are not really surprised. We expected it,” said Mr Shosi, the grandfather.

Mrs Aboud appealed to well-wishers to assist Amina get a quality education since her parents are financially weak.

At Stone Town Academy, there was joy and celebration after the school produced the top female candidate in the county.

Amina was followed by Abdalla Omar Said, 14, who scored 389 out of the 500.

“We are privileged to produce the best candidate this year. Our mean score was 276.52. We will work extra harder to perform even better in future,” said Stone Town manager, Mr Mohamed Abubakar.

Lamu County Education Director, Mr Peter Magiri, said he had instructed sub-county directors of education to gather data before they compile a full report on the county’s performance in the 2016 KCPE.

Lamu County was number 44 out of the 47counies in the country.