For centuries now, academic results are used to gauge people’s intellect. The outcomes that parents may desire for their children may not always align with the reality of what kids produce.

While some shine & prosper in schoolwork from the get-go, others are known to be slow learners and encounter hurdles along the way.

In Kenya, the common narrative is to label such school students as mentally impaired, which only makes things worse.

Many schools do not accurately reflect the underlying reasons for academic challenges and bother to tackle them.

Kaine Okelo’s story

Kaine Okelo, at the age of 17, stands as one of the youngest graduates in Kenya, showing that you need not have academic prowess to make it in the world.

Today, Kaine has a Bachelor’s degree in sports management from one of the world’s top laureate institutions. He is currently pursuing his master’s degree

Esther Kandondi, Kaine’s mother, can proudly attest that success can be achieved through breeding innate talent.

Growing up, Mrs Kadondi would often feel disheartened by her son’s poor results. Acknowledging that Kaine was like every other normal child growing up, she often wondered what was wrong with him.

At age 6, the kindergarten teacher summoned Esther to school for a meeting. The agenda was Kaine’s school behaviour & performance. He was always disrupting class, making noise and not performing.

“In Kindergarten he was fine, I didn’t notice any problem with him. My shock came when I started looking for a primary school,” she said in a past interview.

Kaine’s school was British curriculum oriented. In class 1, the class teacher decided to position Kaine next to him because he was ‘too stubborn’.

He could neither participate in class discussions nor write assignments.

His mother tried to get him transferred to another Nairobi school. To gain admission, he needed to pass an interview. Esther prepared Kaine for the test and left him in the school for a whole day.

“When I came back, they told me ‘Take your child away’,” she reminisced.

The school claimed to only admit disciplined A students, who conform to established norms such as straight queues, like other children.

Frustrated and determined to advocate for her son, Esther explained that perhaps he was too excited about a new school. Her pleas fell on deaf ears. Kaine returned to his old school.

“I tried all sorts of tuitions that you know about. I took him everywhere and people would tell me I was overloading my son with too many things,” she said, recalling that the school had offered to teach Kaine separately from the normal curriculum.

One day, during her school searches, Esther Kadondi came across a signboard for the African Federation for the Gifted and Talented Institution in Westlands.

She summoned her courage and decided to visit the school. To her surprise, she learned that being ‘gifted/talented’ does not necessarily correlate with academic performance.

The discovery was heartwarming, and without giving it a second thought, she enrolled Kaine to the institution.

Kaine Okelo was an avid sports lover. Here, he nurtured his talents away from the rigid academic standards.

Professor Humphrey Obara, the institution’s president testified that Kaine had joined at slightly over 8 years.

Upon an assessment, he was diagnosed with Neural Gangalic Twitch. It explained Kaine’s different instruction, product and learning styles

“This shifted most of his signals from the left hemisphere to the right hemisphere. He is more right-brained,” he explained.

The school realized that Kaine was a person who benefited more from open discussions, lesser instructions and independent learning in an open-door facility.

Furthermore, they realized that Kaine had greater manual dexterity. This means that he had fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination and spatial awareness.

Kaine’s passion was mostly edged on sports journalism. He has pursued a career in the field and he now holds a bachelor’s degree in sports management, a feat he achieved at the mere age of 17.