One morning in my Ethiopian home, when I was seven years old, I was awakened by the sounds of laughter and packing. I quickly got out of bed and saw our luggage piled up on the floor next to my mom. I asked, “Where are we going?” She replied that we were going on a shirshir, which meant “vacation.” My parents would always call anything a shirshir, whether it was a trip to the amusement park in Addis Ababa or a visit to Awasa, a vacation spot in Ethiopia. So I assumed we were taking a short getaway to one of the usual local destinations. When we arrived at the airport, I was confused by my aunt’s and grandmother’s tears. Little did I know I wouldn’t be back for another six years.
During my family’s first year in the United States, I frequently complained about our moving away, which I could see hurt my parents. I had vivid memories of my parents back in Africa, with my dad drawing cartoons and heading the office of a newspaper company while my mom owned an import/export business. All of that changed in the U.S.: My dad worked as a valet attendant and my mom as a custodian. At times they juggled two jobs each to support our new lives here in Philadelphia. Going from an office to jobs like those wasn’t easy for my parents, especially considering they weren’t fluent in English. The hardships they went through helped me see how fortunate I was to have parents willing to make such sacrifices. Their difficult path led me to Penn, and during move-in last fall, I saw another Habesha woman pushing a cart twice her size, and I couldn’t hold back my tears. She reminded me so much of my mother.
My parents’ sacrifice, mixed with the hardships I witnessed in Ethiopia, inspired me to help others — initially, orphans in Ethiopia. After reading my college essay on the topic, my former eighth-grade math teacher and mentor, Larry Kaplan, GED’97, reached out to discuss a similar program he was thinking of developing. We quickly set up a meeting at a Center City cafe to discuss our plans for what would later be known as the Philly Unity Project, or Philly UP.
Read the full story at Wharton Magazine.
—Tsion Bezabih, W’27
Posted: December 11, 2024
