Cultural Study on Mawi Asgedom from Ethiopia
Cultural Study on Mawi Asgedom from Ethiopia
When Mawi Asgedom was three years old he fled the war-torn country of Ethiopia with his family. He ended up in a refugee camp in Sudan where he spent three years of his life. In these camps, him and his family heard magnificent stories about a place called “Amerikha.” This, of course, caused them to want to move there. After about a year they were able to immigrate to Chicago, Illinois. When they arrived in Chicago they lived in a one-room motel room while an immigration office tried to find a church to sponsor them. After that failed, they were moved to the rich suburb of Wheaton, Illinois to see if a church would sponsor them there. They did find a church there and they ended up living in a nice two-story home, which the church paid for most of. But the years ahead of them would be long and hard.
Throughout Mawi’s life in adolescence and as a teenager, he had to deal with many conflicts that all made his life harder. First of all, all of the kids at the school he went to made fun of how him and his brothers/sisters were black. Kids would wait after school for him just to beat him up and make fun of him. Another thing that he had to deal with was language. He didn’t speak much English, which made it very difficult for him to learn things. Poverty was another thing he had to cope with. Him and his family had to get all of their clothes from a dumpster. Poverty also led him to stealing. He once found a parking meter and took it off of its hinges with his brother. They tried to open but before they could a police officer found them. They ran all of the way home and they never got caught.
After a few years, Mawi learned good English, which allowed him to learn in the classes a lot better. He ended up being an extremely good student who always got straight A’s. In his senior year of High school, Mawi received a letter from Harvard University. They were giving him a full scholarship to their school. Mawi went to Harvard and ended up graduating in the top eight of Harvard in 1999.
Mawi lives in Chicago to this day. He is twenty-four years old and...