Your Excellency, Professor Derebew Belew, WU Administrative Board Vice chairperson and Guest of honor of today, your excellency Dr Tesfaye Lemma, President of WU, invited guests, distinguished faculty; proud families and friends; and my fellow graduates of the Class of 2025 congratulations on this great achievement!
I stand before you with a heart that beats for two nations. My name is Nganapai Patrick, representing the South Sudanese students at Wollega University. While today is not the first time Wollega University graduates’ international students, it is a moment to reflect on the journey we’ve shared.
When my fellow South Sudanese and I first arrived here, Wollega felt unfamiliar like a new dance we struggled to learn. But soon, we found our rhythm. We arrived as young students, hungry for knowledge, not knowing that Wollega would become our second home. As one South Sudanese saying goes: “Cows don’t milk themselves, and brains don’t fill themselves either.”
Injera and shiro quickly became part of our daily lives. By the second semester, we could roll injera like the natives. But beyond the food, it was the kindness of our Ethiopian brothers and sisters that truly welcomed us sharing notes, celebrating birthdays, teaching us the word “ishii”, and making us feel at home. As former Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta once said: “Ethiopia is the mother of African countries.”
Through the Ethiopian government scholarship and Wollega University’s doors, we’ve learned much beyond the classroom shared values, diversity, and above all, unity. Like parallel resistors, we reduced each other's stress and shared the current of knowledge. Today’s ceremony is not an ending but a closing bracket in the code of our shared journey.
Our gratitude goes to:
Our professors, who turned confusion into curiosity, sometimes armed with just a chalkboard and a prayer that the projector wouldn’t fail. Our families, who planted seeds of hope that have grown into today’s harvest.
Wollega University its leadership, staff, cafeteria workers, security, and everyone who treated us as family.
The name "Wollega" is engraved in our hearts. Wherever we go South Sudan, Ethiopia, or beyond we will carry it proudly.
A call to action:
We graduate into a world as complex as a capstone project no manual, many bugs, and tight deadlines. But we have written the code of our success; we can debug the challenges ahead.
As we move forward, let us carry: The curiosity of first-year students, the compassion of classmates who shared notes and cups of buna during long nights, a sense of responsibility to serve our families, our communities, and Africa at large.
If we lead with these, our diplomas won’t just hang on walls they will open doors for generations to come.
In true Ethiopian celebration fashion, let’s end with a round of applause like Wollega has never heard before.
Thank you.