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The German and mathematics teacher at Scoil Mhuire Secondary School in Trim has something in common with his Leaving Certificate students this year.
Like them, their own Leaving Cert exams, or their equivalent, were abruptly canceled 28 years ago.
Also in their case, they were replaced by calculated grades, based on teacher estimates. But his was a much more rushed process.
One morning in 1992, 17-year-old Domo Kajic and his classmates were led into the hallway of their school in the Bosnian city of Jajce.
Their names were called out, the principal shook hands, presented their state certificates, and then closed the school.
The next day, Domo reunited with his father and brother in the mountains as the people of Jajce organized to defend their city from the approaching Yugoslav Serbian forces.
“That was it,” he says. “A couple of days later the first bombing started. In the morning and in the late afternoon we had the first air strikes.
“Vukovar had been looted a few months earlier, so we knew the ferocity of the Serbian army. We knew that war was approaching our city.”
“I was so young. I had no idea. I just felt like it was the right thing to do, that someone had to stand up.”
Domo is a fact when he describes the events of those days.
“I was so young. I had no idea. I just felt like it was the right thing to do, that someone had to stand up,” he says.
Over the course of that summer and fall, the city of Jajce came under fierce bombardment. But it resisted, besieged, until finally in October the city fell into the hands of Serbian forces.
Then began what has been described as “the longest and most miserable exodus” of the Bosnian war. As the Serbian tanks advanced towards the city, between 30,000 and 40,000 people fled.
The New York Times estimated that the column of refugees that joined the retreating forces was 30 miles long.
But Domo was not among them.
A shrapnel wound three months after the war led his family to remove him, his mother and his brother from the war zone.
On what he describes as a difficult and dangerous journey, they drove at night, with no lights on, using what he calls “old donkey trails,” forgotten back roads through forests and wild terrain, while trying to avoid the Yugoslav army.
They arrived in Zagreb and then Domo went to see an uncle in Munich as a refugee. At this point he had already turned 18.
For the next five years, Domo washed dishes in the kitchen of a Munich restaurant.
The money he earned was used to support his family; her parents and brother, and her maternal grandparents, who were now in a refugee camp. During those five years, her family depended on her earnings to survive.
In 1995, Jajce was freed from Serbian control and two years later, Domo and his family returned to devastation. The family home had been destroyed, along with everything in it. Or almost everything.
There is only one photo from Domo’s childhood years. This unique keepsake survived because it was framed and placed in a wooden box.
Only then, in 1997, was Domo able to resume his education. A bachelor’s degree in Bosnia was followed by a scholarship to Germany and a master’s degree.
In college, Domo met a young Irish woman, a student in a DCU exchange semester.
Now, 20 years later, they are both happily settled in Trim, with their children. The city reminds Domo of home.
“Trim is how Jajic was … built around an old castle in the old town.”
“You only get to know the true value of a person in times of crisis. And the greater the crisis, the more you learn.”
Domo Kajic continues to support his only surviving father, his mother. She also played her role in the resistance, delivering food to the front lines and city elders during the siege.
“The experience of those years made me what I am now,” he says.
“I am humble. You only get to know the true worth of a person in times of crisis. And the greater the crisis, the more you learn.
“As a teacher, I know that I should not judge a student on their academic performance. They can be very valuable members of society in a time of crisis.”
As for his own career path, Domo says the tremendous shock he suffered in those important years of his early adult life “made no difference” in the end.
“I got my master’s degree and another degree in translation studies, and I became a teacher. I am the third generation of teachers in my family,” he says.
That photo of Domo as a child now hangs on the wall of his mother’s new home in Jajce.
This serious-looking boy, performing a piano piece at a town hall concert, could have had no idea what the turbulent and traumatic years he was about to face, or how they would put him to the test.
As a child, Domo was a promising pianist, attending a special school and practicing for several hours every day. But the war abruptly ended that.
In recent years, although Domo has tentatively started playing again.
Scoil Mhuire is a music school, he says, and sometimes he now plays with his students. “Wrong!” he says.
In the face of the results of Monday’s calculated grades and the uncertainty and restriction that Covid-19 has caused, Domo Kajic’s message for the class of 2020 is to be patient.
“It is very difficult for a young man to be patient and not panic. That comes with time.
“I would say ‘believe in yourself’, and if you can, believe in God or something positive. A better future may not come tomorrow, but it will come.”
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