71 pages • 2 hours read
Mawi AsgedomOf Beetles and Angels: A Boy’s Remarkable Journey from a Refugee Camp to Harvard
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | YA | Published in 2001A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: Memories
Mawi’s story begins by recalling fragmented memories of his family fleeing their home in Adi Wahla, Ethiopia. Without a more efficient means of transportation, the family is forced to leave their home on foot: “We had no choice, either. We—my mother, my five-year old brother, my baby sister, and I at age three—kept walking hoping that we would make it to Sudan and find my father” (2). Though the reader does not yet know why, Mawi’s father, Haileab, is already in Sudan, so Mawi’s mother and the children must travel from Ethiopia to Sudan by themselves.
Making their way on foot from Ethiopia to Sudan is no easy feat, and takes both physical and psychological tolls on the family. Mawi recalls a woman who travelled alongside his family on this long journey. The woman’s feet became so wounded after having walked such a great distance that she was forced to crawl for the latter part of their journey out of Ethiopia. The woman’s feet became “bloody, red flesh, mixed with brownish sand and dirt,” but nonetheless she persisted because “what choice does a refugee have?” (2)
The chapter ends with Mawi personifying the voice of the Sudanese city of Awad, which is where Mawi’s family arrive to, once in Sudan. Awad is flooded with refugees from Ethiopia, so in this anthropomorphized voice, the city of Awad tells the refugees to limit their hope: “Beware. We can ill treat your ailments. We have few pills here and little life…But you have no choice, and neither do we. For we give only that which we have” (2).
Chapter 2 Summary: The Camp
This chapter details Mawi and his family’s life in a Sudanese refugee camp in Umsagata, “a small dusty village of straw-and-mud adobes” (5). The Asgedom family lived in the camp for three years, from 1980 to 1983.
Against the odds, the family is reunited with Mawi’s father, Haileab, who had fled to Umsagata several months prior. Haileab, we learn, was under surveillance by the warring factions in Ethiopia – both the rebel groups and the dictator – and so, he was forced to flee to Umsagata alone before the rest of his family. The full story of Haileab’s journey to Sudan is covered in Chapter 10.
Life in the camp is difficult: Famine is a constant threat, war rages nearby, and disease is prevalent. Childhood for Mawi and his siblings is incredibly violent. Mawi and his siblings suffer brutal beatings at school, sometimes at the hands of schoolyard bullies, and sometimes by teachers. Violence is the norm throughout the camp, and corporal punishment is used as a valid method of disciplining children.
As an example of how difficult life is for children in the Sudanese refugee camp, Mawi tells an anecdote about a boy named Ahferom, a notorious bully in Umsagata. One day, Mawi and his older brother Tewolde are attacked by Ahferom for no apparent reason. Ahferom seizes Mawi by his shirt, but luckily a dog comes to Mawi’s aid by biting Ahferom’s leg and scaring him away. Mawi is grateful to this dog, but his notion of pets, as an Ethiopian refugee, is unsentimental: “We usually didn’t believe in pets. How could we feed pets when all around us our countrymen struggled to feed themselves?” (6). Mawi does not give the dog a name, but he does give it food from time to time, as thanks for the animal interceding.
In Umsagata, the Ethiopian and Eritrean community, called habesha, try to maintain a sense of normalcy by keeping their cultural traditions alive. The habesha celebrate religious feasts and practice a “circle dance” (9). Haileab, we learn, is the best dancer of habesha music in the camp.
Dancing aside, life in the refugee camp is miserable, and so Haileab begins making plans to bring his family to “Amerikha, a distant land where everyone had a future” (11). The other members of the village caution the family about how life will be in America, saying existence will be terrible for them there. Nonetheless, Haileab begins organizing his family’s departure to America. The chapter concludes with the habesha elders giving advice to Haileab about America, particularly about the racism there: “Beware your skins. Blacks are treated like dogs in America, like packhorses. Beware, too, of thieves. Yes, thieves who steal much more than money – thieves who can loot minds, cultures, and even bodies. Most of all, please remember your country and remember us. Remember your people” (12).
Chapter 3 Summary: Coming to America
The organization World Relief, a U.S.-based Christian non-profit that aids refugees, is instrumental in facilitating the Asgedom family’s move to America. After passing a rigorous examination in Umsagata, a test that is infamous among the habesha for its difficulty, Mawi and his family are deemed eligible for relocation to the United States. Questions on the test include “Why do you want to go to America?” and “What will you do when you get there?” and the correct answers are completely subjective: “Many clever interviewees had failed despite giving the same answers as those who had passed. Others had passed after giving the same answers as those who had failed” (15).
Just as the Asgedom family is about to leave for the United States, in 1982, they find out that Mawi’s half-sister Mulu is alive and living in another region of Sudan. Haileab refuses to leave without her, and he pleads with World Relief to make it possible for another person to join them in their relocation. After much finagling on Haileab’s part, World Relief agrees. It is a year before the relocation process begins.
Mawi’s family leaves for America in 1983. The family, at that point, has six members total: father Haileab, in his late forties; mother Tsege, in her mid-twenties; Mulu, Mawi’s half-sister, in her late teens; Tewolde, Mawi’s eldest brother,who is nine years old; and Mehret, Mawi’s youngest sister, whois five years old. Mawi himself is seven years old when they embark on their journey to America. From Sudan, the family boards a plane for America.
Chapters 1-3 Analysis
The idea that life as an African refugee is immeasurably hard from the start is underscored in these opening chapters, as Mawi details the disadvantages that affected his life (and, by extension, the lives of many refugees, as well). Mawi’s family undergoes the painful process of leaving their home in Ethiopia for safety’s sake, but even after the move, they are in danger, as the journey from Ethiopia to Sudan involves going from one war-ravaged country to another. As Mawi notes in Chapter 1, Sudan hardly has more resources than Eritrea or Ethiopia. The author also emphasizes how little choice the family had in deciding their fate—war and survival made their decision for them.
The book’s major themes of forgiveness, kindness, and the uniqueness of the refugee experience all emerge in this beginning section of the book. For example, in the Sudanese refugee camp, when the village bully steals food from Mawi and his siblings, in the moment the children are enraged. However, in retrospect, Mawi finds it difficult to maintain anger toward the boy: “How can I feel ill will toward Ahferom [the bully] when I know that soon after, he joined the Ethiopian liberation movements? And that later, he joined the long list of senseless casualties, able to survive our crazed dog but not his own countrymen?” (7). As with anecdotes like these, the reader sees that desperation can drive a person to do anything in the name of survival. Forgiveness, then, comes with a greater understanding of the refugee’s plight.
