‘Where there is a Will, there is a Wayne’: Identical twins score similar grade in KCSE 2024

There were twin smiles on the faces of Will Emmanuel Isanda and Wayne John Isanda following the release of the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examination results for 2024.

The identical twins not only wore identical smiles and clothing down to their shoes, but you couldn't tell them apart from their mean grades.

After acing their Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) exams in the wake of the COVID pandemic, they were both called to Alliance High School, where they were dealt an emotional blow but rose to the occasion and once more excelled in their exams, scoring an identical A of 82 points.

"We not only got As, we both got As of 82 points,” said one of the twins, Will.

Wayne added, "Our teachers were asking us, 'How is this even possible?' We told them it's just a twin thing."

The twins are no strangers to academic excellence as it was a close finish between the two of them when they sat their KCPE exams for 2020, the year the COVID pandemic struck in March of 2021. At Imperial Primary School in Kisii, they came in second and third in their school.

As a result, they both received identical admission letters to Alliance High School.

"We asked the principal if we could be in the same house, but he refused. But it ended up working in our favour because one had to wake up and walk to the other's house to wake them up to go read. Maybe if we were in the same house, we would wake up late,” Wayne stated.

Judie Kaberia, their aunt, added: "It is not luck; these boys worked hard. If you woke up at 3a.m., you'd find them reading."

One would think twin adolescent boys in the same high school would get up to some mischief on account of their identical appearance, but as it turns out, even in their temperaments, they are alike.

"I was a house captain, and he was the school captain,” Will said.

"There's a quote we actually made for ourselves: 'An increase in the degree of your hard work is proportional to your success,” stated Will.

They were, however, fortunate to have each other to lean on when, in their first term at Alliance, their mother, who suffered from rheumatoid arthritis, passed away.

"Imagine being successful like that, and then a tragedy like this happens to you. And it's your own mother, and you're just Form One students,” recalled Will.

Wayne, on his part, said, "And we normally say quotes that we've made ourselves: When you experience disaster, you recover your master.”

"After losing their mother, we didn't know how they were going to cope, but they assured us they were going to live up to her dreams for them,” Ms. Kaberia added.

And now, as the boys look to the future, they maintain the same unified voice.

Wayne said, "We normally have a saying that where there's a Will, there's a Wayne."

The boys, who after sitting their KCPE aspired to be a neurosurgeon and a cardiologist, now say they want to make their mark in the world as tech entrepreneurs.