Eritrea-Stories



During the course of this project, our group was lucky enough to interview a refugee who had many interesting stories. The refugees name is Merhawi and he is 24 years old. He gave us his permission to use his name and said, "There are many Merhawi's. It's okay." He experienced many hardships during his life in Eritrea due to the war with Ethiopia. He told us about how life during the war simply "wasn't a life." His family was forced to make a difficult choice, they could either stay in Eritrea and join the army or they could flee the country and start a new life. They chose to flee, taking with them only what they could carry and a few of their goats and sheep. They walked for nearly four days when they were lucky enough to come across the Red Cross, which helped them to find a safe refugee camp in southeastern Eritrea.

When asked about thing he found difficult to adjust to in the United States, he talked about the diffrences between food here and in Eritrea. " Everything had sugar in it, I could only eat turkey and Pork." He also said how he "didn't like to cook, but if someone cooks for me, I'll eat everything."

The day we interviewed Merhawi, he told us a story about himself and his mother. While he was driving boats in the navy, he heard that his mother was coming to see him. Having not seen her in three years, he was very excited and asked his boss for some time off. That day his boss told him that he would be going to the border of Yemen in one of the boats, but Merhawi was still content with just a few hours with his mom. Merhawi's friend, who also worked with him, met his mother before Merhawi could see her, and immediately knew that it was his mother because of their similar appearance. Before the friend could tell Merhawi, their boss told him to tell Merhawi's mother that he was already out on the border of Yemen and Eritrea and that no one knew when he would be back. The friend did what he was told, for fear of the commander harming him or his family, but was deeply ashamed afterwards. Merhawi's mother was so sad that she made the friend promise to tell Merhawi to come see her. Later on Merhawi found out about what had happened through this same friend, how he was stopped from seeing his own flesh and blood. At this time, Merhawi began to hate his country and placed the blame upon all these people for keeping him from his mother. He even started to have dreams of his mother who would be begging and crying for him to come home. From the way he told his story, we could tell that family was his number one priority, and because of the war, he was kept from part of his family, which is why he cursed his own country. It has been four years since this moment in time, and a total of seven years have gone by and Merhawi has yet to see his own mother again.

If anyone has a story they would like to share, we encourage you to add your experience, even leave it anonymously if need be. We would truly appreciate your courage and openness, knowing that your experience can help us all to understand what goes on around the world, even just a little bit.

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Sources: Merhawi. Personal interview. 19 April, 2007.