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

Mawi and his family spend their first two weeks in America in a Chicago motel room, all six of them packed into two rooms. World Relief assigns the family a caseworker named Beth, who is tasked with finding them a church sponsor to help the family get their footing in their new country. 

After several weeks, Beth finally gets the Bethel Presbyterian Church in Wheaton, Illinois to serve as Mawi’s family sponsor. The family is in awe of the church: “Like the rest of Wheaton, the church was almost all white, and from our standpoint, all haftamat, or crazy-rich. Bethel went to work immediately on finding us an affordable home—no small task in Wheaton” (22).

While the church searches for housing, the family continues to adjust to their new life in America, encountering new cultural experiences at every turn. Mawi and his family rarely leave their motel room without a World Relief caseworker to guide them, so Haileab does not understand that pedestrians do not usually walk on the shoulder of the highway, and leads the family down Route 38. Mawi and his family are also unaccustomed to living in a country with ready access to TV, and they are transfixed by the “dots” (pixels) that come together to form moving images on the screen (25).