News & Articles
Weekend Impressions: … About Prize Ceremonies
By Meron Abraha
Jul 1, 2008, 3:33am

Last Sunday, while on a taxi ride to downtown Asmara, I met a man I knew at a friend’s house. He was with his two daughters and I couldn’t help overhearing the conversation they were having.

“Daddy will you buy us biscuits today?” went the older of the two.

“No biscuits for you today but your sister will have anything she wants because she won a prize at school,” was the father’s straight answer.

As I could see from the report card he held in his hands, Martha, the younger of the two, had ranked first from a class of forty-three: impressive for a first grader.

As far as my curious eyes could tell, her sister Sesen, who finished third grade, had also outstanding marks. She didn’t win a prize but I noticed, however, that she had stood sixth from fifty-one students.

So by the time we disembarked the taxi, I congratulated Beraki, the father, and tried to cheer Sesen up saying that logically her rank was above her sister’s.

“You actually overtook forty-five classmates while your sister left behind only forty-two,” I said.

Beraki then told me that he was merely trying to make a point and that he was in fact proud of his daughters. And off they went for a nice late morning treat.

The thirtieth of June every year marks the official closing ceremony of schools in Eritrean highlands, and particularly in Asmara. Well and good if it falls on a Sunday, but the closest is otherwise taken up for the occasion.

This year schools in the central region held their closing ceremonies Sunday June 29, 2008. Looking at children dressed in their best, accompanied by parents bearing flower bouquets, has been quite a common sight in most streets of Asmara that day.

Of course that goes only for those students who take back prizes back home. Other than that, students don’t need their parents to take their report cards.

I remember the first time I won a prize. It was in sixth grade and I had just gotten out the Italian school where school closing ceremonies are not that formal. When I got called to the podium for my prize, I can still remember the joy on my parents’ faces.

And then there was the time when my sister was in high school. She had won first prize in her class and third from the whole unit of ninth grade. The day of the ceremony, we were a total of ten people applauding when the name of my sister reverberated over the loudspeakers.

And that make prize ceremonies probably the best moments for students and the proudest for families.

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