Parent Teacher Conferences
AKA Maputo will host Parent Teacher Conferences for students in Grades 8-10 on Friday, 20 November. Please book your appointment via email or ManageBac.
Asad Bogani: The Adventure of a Lifetime
Leaving one’s home and family is a daunting task for any person, but even more so for children. However, the lure of a better education and a new adventure can provide ample motivation for students to leave everything they know and follow their dreams.
For grade nine student Asad Bogani leaving his family and friends in Dubai and traveling to India to attend the Aga Khan Academy (AKA) in Hyderabad was a personal decision rooted in a need to become his own person.
“It was something of a personal decision on my side. I really love Dubai [it is] my home, but I thought I should try something out of my comfort zone. I decided I should be on my own now and live by myself.”
The AKA has allowed students to not only have access to a world-class education but also activities that will help them with interpersonal growth. “I play football, volleyball, a bit of basketball, but my favorite sport is cricket,” says Asad, who is looking forward to playing cricket at the Academy.
Beyond extracurricular activities the students’ time is also taken up by personal chores. “There’s so many activities going on and you have your own life, like cleaning your cupboard and keeping neat; a lot of things happening as compared to my life in Dubai,” explains Asad.
Though Asad is finding lots to enjoy about his experience at the AKA there are always challenges to uprooting oneself from familiar surroundings. “My parents really miss me and I’m really missing home as well, but they’re supporting me and what I’m trying to do here,” he says.
But a little bit of homesickness is a small price to pay for a future that he will now be able to look forward to, one he hopes will mesh his love for sports, especially cricket, with his favorite subject—Mathematics.
“Maths is really fun to do. I’d love to do something related to Maths, like statistics and join it with sports, like a sports statistician, something related to cricket because that’s my love. I’d really like to combine the two of them and work towards making that as my career. After completing my diploma program here I’m aiming for university in England and onto my career.”
With ambitions and an educational foundation that will go the distance, Asad is well on his way to creating the life he’s imagined for himself.
Ruhi Kamal Manek (Class of 2016): Advocating for Africa
Ruhi Kamal Manek, an alumnus of the Aga Khan Academies in Mombasa and now a sophomore at Yale University in the United States, took away one enduring lesson from the Academy: the importance of engaging in thoughtful and careful consideration of diverse opinions. She explains that it was her time at the Academy that forced her to reexamine her old-world views and believes that her new way of thinking as a citizen of the world was borne of her stay in residence at the school:
“Living with people from so many diverse backgrounds helped me appreciate differences in people. This experience further helped me feel comfortable interacting with people from diverse backgrounds and diverse cultures at Yale.”
Ruhi was born in Nairobi, Kenya and grew up in the small town of Eldoret. It was her desire to learn and challenge herself more that made her apply to the Academy.
“I could not think of a better place to do that than at the Academy,” Ruhi states. “Being admitted to the school was the beginning of a transformative journey for me - a defining moment in my academic and personal life.”
The Academy places immense importance on meaningful public service. Ruhi participated in numerous voluntary undertakings but it was involvement in the annual school-based deworming program in the impoverished Bombolulu area of Mombasa that had a lasting impact on her. Under this program, school children receive an oral dose of deworming medicine designed to lower their risk of infection by worms and thus enhance their health and school productivity.
“The experience opened my eyes,” Ruhi says. “The thought that something so trivial as administering a few drops of medicine in a child’s mouth can transform that child’s future was inspiring to me.”
Involvement in this program inspired Ruhi in many ways. Watching the children joyfully engage with life forced her to reflect on values of humility, modesty and gratification:
“As I stood among the children, I felt as though my heart had grown twice as large, making space for these beautiful souls. I was filled with an inexplicable amount of joy as I marveled at the contentment and optimism around me. Despite the conditions in which the children lived and learned, they were radiating with happiness. I was in awe. The whole experience reminded me of a quote by the Buddha: ‘The cessation of desire is the cessation of suffering.’”
After this experience at the Academy, Ruhi continued her volunteer work at Yale. She is part of the TEDxYale team and helps to organize seminars and conferences. She is a member of Yale UNICEF and is involved in fund-raising efforts to make a difference in children’s lives globally. Committed to women’s rights regarding education and leadership roles, Ruhi also joined the Yale chapter of the Circle of Women, a non-profit organization “that educates, inspires and empowers women to become leaders and peacemakers.”
Additionally, Ruhi is involved in developing a wellness curriculum for a girls’ secondary school in Orkeeswa, Tanzania, which promotes the ideas that healthy students are better learners and that focusing on wellness now can produce huge intergenerational benefits.
“My first year at Yale has undoubtedly been enhanced through my participation in activities that I have long been passionate about,” states Ruhi. She unequivocally credits the Academy’s International Baccalaureate (IB) curriculum and the residential program for her growth and personal development. “My journey at the Academy was one of the most intense yet fulfilling growth periods of my life. I think it is safe to say that it played a key role in helping me develop the person I am today.”
When asked what her aspirations are for the country of her birth, Ruhi radiates determination. “I want to help redefine the way in which the rest of the world views my country, and more particularly the African continent. I want to be an active agent in ensuring that our stories are no longer told for us but by us.”
She is also determined to promote education in her country. “I want to tackle the issue of the lack of education. I value nothing more than the education I have been so privileged to receive and the many opportunities that have come my way because of it. I wish to help provide the same for as many people as I possibly can in my country of origin and beyond.”
By Perviz Walji
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Erica Byenkya (Class of 2014): Contributing to society with love and generosity
Erica Byenkya, who is a fourth-year student at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, Canada, is a graduate of the Aga Khan Academy Mombasa and originally from Uganda. Since leaving the Academy in 2014, Erica has been pursuing a Bachelor of Commerce at the university with a double major in marketing and computer and information systems. She is expecting to graduate from the university in May 2019.
“I think that my Academy experience was vital in my success in university so far,” Erica says confidently.
The Academy, she says, nurtured within her a love of volunteering that helped her make connections and friends and ensured she remained connected to her local community.
“I think that we were definitely more focused on encouraging independence and community service than the schools attended by other students,” Erica comments.
The experience of living in residence at the Academy, she says, also helped her become more self-sufficient and taught her how to take care of herself – this was useful when she moved to Canada for higher education.
At university, Erica has worked through three work terms as part of the cooperative education programme. In these three terms, she has worked as a marketing coordinator for a software development company and at a non-profit organisation focused on encouraging students and faculty in the sciences. She has also taken up volunteer work, including with a local after-school youth programme and as the public relations representative of the Saint Mary’s African Student Society (SMASS). She is currently preparing for her second year with SMASS.
Erica is also doing well in her academic work. She received an entrance scholarship from Saint Mary’s University, which was increased last year due to academic achievement. Erica thanks her counsellors at the Academy in Mombasa for supporting her with her applications.
“I had a very hard time writing my personal statements for my university applications and I know that without the help of my counsellors, I would not have been accepted into all the universities I applied to.”
At the Academy, Erica was one of the founders of a service group that aimed to support local farmers in the area by consulting with them about their families’ needs and fundraising to help meet those needs. Through their efforts in the first year, they helped one family send their youngest children to school, build a small shop to sell their wares and buy new seeds. The service group also helped pay the exam fees of the entire graduating class of a local school so they could all sit their final exams.
One of the many things Erica misses at the Academy in Mombasa is her wonderful friends.
“I am still in contact with some of them online but being able to spend so much time with them was a gift I am very thankful for,” she says.
Her most unforgettable experience at the Academy, which she is very proud of, was learning to play the violin; this, to her, was the most difficult to learn among other musical instruments. She fondly remembers her teachers: Mrs Mwandawiro, her dorm mother and chemistry teacher, and Mr Dudi, whom she calls, “my wonderfully dramatic English teacher.”
“They both pushed me very hard because they had high expectations for me, and while I did not perform as well as I hoped in chemistry, their expectations always encouraged me,” she says.
Erica chose to participate in the International Baccalaureate (IB) programme because she felt, and still feels, it offered her greater flexibility in her choices for the future.
“With the national curriculum, you are restricted to three subjects in your final two years," she says. "But I was unsure about the career path I wanted to take, so I really appreciated being able to further study interesting subjects in the IB programme while deciding what I wanted to do with my future."
Erica says her plans after graduating from university are to stay and work in Canada for a while and then eventually make the decision about whether to pursue a postgraduate degree.
“I do see myself coming back to Uganda, but before that happens I would like to travel more.”
When asked what she would focus on to improve the lives of people in her country if she had all the resources at her disposal, Erica hoped that one day she could contribute to the renovation of the Ugandan library system. She believes this would benefit all the citizens of Uganda, especially the young students whose schools may not have large libraries or who seek safe and productive spaces to spend their free time.
AKA, Mombasa Graduate Wins Pathologist Award
AKA, Mombasa Graduate Wins Pathologist Award
Junior School Sports Day
