Of Beetles and Angels: A Boy’s Remarkable Journey from a Refugee Camp to Harvard

Set entirely in the past, Chapter 10 is another section that falls outside the narrative’s present chronology. This chapter is devoted to explaining in greater detail the extraordinary history of Mawi’s father, Haileab.

Born in Eritrea in 1934, Haileab is orphaned by his parents and raised by Christian monks. At age fourteen, with no family ties or obligations, he leaves Eritrea for the province of Tigray, in Ethiopia, to try and make a new life for himself. Haileab is able to get by in Tigray only because of the kindness of strangers: “But our people are generous and big of heart, especially among village folk, and few go hungry while there is any to spare. So he survived” (86). 

Haileab succumbs to a few youthful indiscretions in this new land: “He loved drink. He loved women. He loved every vice that a teenage boy loves when he has no adult supervision” (86). Still, Haileab also loves learning, and he reads whatever books he can get his hands on. In doing so, he teaches himself basic anatomy, physiology, physics, mathematics, and chemistry, which is why he is able to pass the Ethiopian government’s general test for physicians, without ever having been to school after his time in the monastery.