I had just done the first four students’ registration in the database when something caught my attention. Oops! It was a female student that was given a double promotion from seventh grade to ninth grade with a 97 average in 2013.

That was the first I had seen over the long period of my stay at the Soltiamon Christian School System. The news would soon be the talk-of-the-town on campus, I knew for sure. That was why I was happy to have been a witness.

I was given a vacation job by the IT Department to work on the school’s database. I quickly copied the report card to my flash disk. The name I saw was Jerrut Kou Kulah, one of the first set of two students to register for the academic year. From that moment on, I was interested in knowing more about her.

The next few days, I got some details about her. She was that easy going student who focused all her time on her lessons. Born on August 22, 2000, Jerrut enrolled at Soltiamon in the first grade after completing her kindergarten education at the Joseph Jenkins Roberts United Methodist School in Monrovia. Among four children, Jerrut is the only girl child of her parents.

We resumed school in September 2013 and Jerrut, who was a seventh-grade student one year ago was now a ninth-grade student. Our school had many activity clubs, and as her senior, I was fortunate to meet her in the quizzing club, which I partly supervised.

“Hello, what is your name?” I asked this dark-skinned young lady who was making her way for quizzing practice.

“I’m Jerrut, a member of this class,” she replied. That was how we became friends.

“I am Wainright. Congrats on your double promotion. How do you feel about this?” I asked curiously.

“Oh, thanks. Actually, there is a lot of work I have to do, and I need more time allocated to my studies… I am happy and simultaneously sad because there is a great task before me. It is a challenge because I have to prove myself qualified for this promotion.” She said this softly as she rushed to join her other colleagues already on the bench to begin practice.

Just as she told me she had to study harder to prove herself qualified for the promotion, she did. She got the highest average at the end of the first semester and was again promoted to 10^th grade and at the end of the year passed to 11^th grade with a 96 average.

Can you imagine four classes in two years with such high grades? Incredible! The name Jerrut Kulah soon became well known on campus.

“This girl is really a genius,” I often heard my proprietress, Mrs. Tiangay Joah, say. Mrs. Joah was not one to heap praises on just anybody.

Jerrut confessed to me that during her elementary years, the sciences gave her some difficulties; but her remedy was giving it more time while trusting God. “Jesus Christ is the secret to academic success. He gives me all the knowledge and understanding I need.” She often told me. Isn’t this kind of interesting? I would kick away that notebook if any topic there gave me difficulty, what more of a whole subject? At least I got to learn one trick from her. Many of us did also pray and trust in Jesus, but we did not get 96 average. Isn’t there still something more to know?

I see Jerrut as a simple but prodigious young lady. She is a quintessential Liberian girl who represents the many other uncountable brilliant female students that are hidden in the ‘messy’ educational system of Liberia.

She was one of only three girls, along with seven boys, who reached Division II in the WAEC Examination for 2016.

List of the students who placed in Division II in the 2016 WAEC senior high school exams. Source: WAEC

This clearly presents a case that, no matter the system or its administrators, academic success depends on the individual. Jerrut graduated from high school on August 6, 2016, with a 96.5 average, which puts her above over 2,000 students from about five branches that make up the entire Soltiamon Christian School System. And she is still weeks away from being 16-years old.

I was worried about her case and hope it will present a different story; unlike Elvis Juasemai, another graduate of Soltiamon who made it to the top of his class. Elvis was the only student in Liberia to pass the trial West African Senior School Certificate Examination in 2013; he also made it to Division II in WAEC.

Like Jerrut who wants to become an orthopedist, Elvis is also interested in medicine. These are young people that need opportunities to go out and acquire skills in their areas of interest to come back and contribute to Liberia. We are here crying about our health and education sectors every day, but thousands of aspirations are being drained by the flood of lack of opportunity.

“Can you imagine that we only have one orthopedist in our nation?” Jerrut asked me two days after her graduation. “And do you know that there are many people who face congenital and functional abnormality of the bone in Liberia? Just imagine one man to a whole nation. I think I can study this too and find a cure to bone diseases while solving other complex problem of the bones for Liberians.”

I just wondered to myself how this would even be possible without the opportunity to study abroad. This is the same problem that got Elvis managing an entertainment group called ‘Tunes Liberia.’ This was the same Elvis who also took a test along with me for a local government scholarship here in Monrovia a few days ago after accumulating a 3.7 GPA at Mother Pattern School of Medicine, where he currently studies Biology and Chemistry.

Many others face similar challenges.

We cannot continue to bury high potentials at the back of opportunities and expect to have a transformation in our country. The solution to Liberia’s problem lies with Liberians. There are many of these potentials everywhere in Liberia and I am very confident that harnessing them will have a multiplying effect in Liberia.

Other countries like Liberia that rose to greatness also had citizens going to acquire a foreign education; and with government’s support, went back home to contribute to the development of their country.

Some of these exorbitant amounts of money spent on luxurious cars, meaningless travels, public relations, and areas that have no impact can be used by the government to search for and sponsor some of these young Liberians abroad. We do not need bilateral scholarships every time. Harnessing high potentials like the Jerrut’s, the Elvis’, and me, too, Liberia can boast of a developed nation in a few years from now.

Featured photo by Joshua S. Kulah. Editor’s note: A previous version of this article contained stock photo. It now has a photo of Jerrut Kulah. Jerrut’s birth year has also been corrected to be 2000 and not 2002.