KCSE top scorers reveal reason for their success

Naomi Kawira Kirimi (left) from Pangani Girls and Brian Maina Kamau from Alliance High School celebrate after being announced as best performers in this year's KCSE examination on December 20, 2017. PHOTOS | ALEX NJERU AND EVANS HABIL | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • Naomi is hoping to pursue Civil engineering at the University of Nairobi because she likes physics.
  • Brian Maina Kamau had contemplated leaving Alliance High in his first months there.

Naomi Kagwira Karimi, the top student in 2017 Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education from Pangani Girls with a mean of 87.011, had aimed at getting an A but never imagined being the best in the country.

The 17-year-old girl could not believe her ears when Education Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang'i mentioned her name as the best student until she received several calls from journalists trying to locate where she was.

“I couldn’t hold back my tears after I heard my name being read out by the CS. I started screaming in joy,” she said.

She said she always worked hard, waking up as early as 4am for morning preps and going to sleep as late as 11pm.

PREPARATION
Karimi, who scored 422 marks in her Kenya Certificate of Primary Education at Chogoria Girls Primary Boarding School, also attributed her success to her teachers who gave her all the attention she needed and parents who made sure she got the right guidance.

She said that she is hoping to pursue Civil engineering at the University of Nairobi because she likes physics.

Karimi said she has always believed in herself and felt that KCSE was not that much different from other mock examinations that she used to pass very well.

HOMESICK

Brian Maina Kamau, the top boy in this year’s KCSE examination, had contemplated leaving Alliance High School in his first months there.

Had his parents granted his request and taken him to a day school, perhaps he could not have clocked 86.757 points to emerge tops among the 315,630 boys who sat the test.

“The first time I came here, I was homesick. I felt like I couldn’t make it,” he told the Nation on Wednesday.

The exam was also full of coincidences for him because he wrote the first paper on November 6, his 17th birthday, and left the school on November 29, the very date his father Dr Gideon Maina — the vice chancellor of the Pioneer International University — had left the institution in 1995.

GRATEFUL
On the request to be transferred, Brian recalled that “life was moving too fast” because he had been day-schooling while in primary.

He wrote a letter to his mother Maryanne Wangari asking for a transfer.

“I have kept it to date,” the mother said.

But his father, knowing the ways of the school, could hear none of it.

“He told me, ‘You must be crazy, mad or both,’” Brian recalled.

On Wednesday, as Brian and his parents plus his younger brother Ian celebrated inside the Alliance compound, he was grateful that his father did not buy his idea.