DESSAP: The Mathematics Prodigy becoming a Robotics Instructor by Brandon Ebah Oben

If you attended High School you may have been tempted to classify each of your classmates based on their subject preferences, abilities and creativity during laboratory sessions. You may also classify each person based on how they behave during lectures (calm, noisy, nuisance). Dessap was one of those classmates who always intrigued me, not because of his funny and sarcastic attitude but because of his Mathematics prowess. He knew the ins and outs of each topic, each phenomenon or principle related to mathematics. If you wanted him to understand a concept more easily then you had to use figures.

His Mathematics prowess to me however was not some kind of astonishment. I saw Dessap during the holidays studying continually mathematics, with his textbook and calculator. Before the mathematics teacher had even reached half of the syllabus, Dessap had already finished the textbook. That’s why he used to annoy us because he understood everything the teacher was saying and could even correct him while we were still struggling to put the dots together. His calculator was his ‘baby’ and you had to really trust God if you hoped he would lend it out to you even for 2 minutes.

The GCE Advanced level came out and it was no surprise when the Mathematics Prodigy scored an ‘A’ grade in Mathematics and Further Mathematics.

While in university, our prodigy had developed skills in electronics and robotics. A skill that earned him the Ambassadorship of TME Education in Cameroon. Through this position he has been empowering, inspiring and training younger and even older people than he is, the fundamentals of robotics. He is the founder of Robotsave and has enrolled for a Professional bachelor degree in Mechatronics in space at Universite de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines in France.

While reflecting on my Mathematics Prodigy, I want you to look within you and bring out that prodigy you’ve been hiding to the world. We need more of people like Dessap. Not that he hasn’t or still doesn’t face difficulties, no, but that in the midst of contradiction we can be resilient, and faithful to what God has called us to be.

I hope Dessap’s story inspires you to leave your comfort zone as someone said one time ‘leaving a warm bed to a cold room’.