Pandemic can’t slow valedictorian refugee

INDIANAPOLIS – Alex Ngaba doesn’t want to just be the first person from his family to graduate college.

No, when Ngaba graduates from college in four years – and there’s little doubt he will after finishing this month as the top student at Indianapolis’ George Washington High School – he’ll be the first person from his entire village to earn a college degree. That is, unless his sister beats him to it. Ngaba, 21, is the oldest of four children. His sister, Vanessa Djouma, also just graduated high school and is enrolling at Ivy Tech Community College in the fall. They have two younger brothers for whom Ngaba hopes to set a good example as he heads off to Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana.

After learning English at 17 and living in a refugee camp following a civil war in his native country, he wasn’t about to let a senior year marred by the coronavirus deter him from his ambitions.

“My goal is, I just want to be a man and try to help my family as much as I can,” he said. “I just want to be someone who can change my family’s life. They’re counting on me to study well and finish college.”

Ngaba spent the first 12 years of his life in a village in the Central African Republic. Back then, about 500 people lived there. Now, there are maybe 150.

That’s because in 2012 civil war came to the country. Like many of its people, Ngaba’s family fled. They ended up in a refugee camp in Cameroon and then settled

Alex Ngaba learned English at 17, became valedictorian of his high school class and set his sights on college.

there for several years. The family found out in 2014 that they’d be going to the U.S., but it took another two years before they touched down in New York City and made their way to Chicago and then Indianapolis.

Ngaba was 17 when he enrolled with Indianapolis Public Schools and was placed in a program that serves students who are learning English. He spoke his native Kaba, French and some Spanish but almost no English. He was expected to be enrolled in the program for a full year before transitioning into one of the district’s four high schools but did so after just one semester.

He picked up English quickly from watching television, he said. After that, Ngaba went to Arsenal Technical High School.

“I told them, you have to put me in a school with computers,” he said. “Everyone who asked me what I wanted to do, I told them computers.”

He didn’t yet know about the computer science and computer engineering courses he could take. But soon he was taking all he could and met Tim Kilgo, who was teaching computer technology courses at Arsenal Tech. When the district reorganized its high schools and created an information technology academy at George Washington, Kilgo went there. Ngaba followed.

“He’s the type of student that really elevates everyone else around him, even me,” Kilgo said. “He’d make suggestions on assignments.”

Ngaba had an interest in computers long before coming to the U.S. As a boy, he saw Bill Gates on television and learned about Microsoft and the development of personal computers. He started trying to learn how they worked.

Eventually, he wants to make a career out of it. After graduating with a GPA above 4.0, Ngaba is heading to Wabash to study either computer engineering or computer science.

Like so many high school seniors, Ngaba was robbed of the traditional pomp and circumstance of graduation by the pandemic. All of the school district’s high schools had virtual ceremonies this month. Ngaba said it was sad, but he has dealt with worse.

“It’s not anyone’s fault – it is life,” he said. “I’ve had really bad things in the past, worse than COVID-19.”