Parents have begun process of getting son’s cleft lip repaired.

Born with a cleft lip, Merhawi Fetwi, 3, doesn’t seem to notice — but others do.
“I’m embarrassed that I can’t make him perfect,” said Kiros Gebeye, 33, the boy’s father, through a translator.

Gebeye, his wife Tsega Seyum, 23, and Fetwi arrived in Jacksonville four months ago from a refugee camp in Ethiopia. Getting Fetwi’s cleft lip fixed was one of the reasons the family wanted to come here.

Since arriving, life has been difficult. Gebeye has a sixth-grade education — and while he speaks six languages, he has only been learning English for three months. He got a job doing maintenance work for an apartment complex but doesn’t believe it will last once he finishes the current project.

Seyum found a job as a housekeeper for a hotel, but her paycheck of a few hundred dollars every two weeks is barely enough for the family to survive. Their apartment rental costs $550, not including utilities. They keep the lights on as little as possible, Seyum said.

They have begun the process of getting Fetwi’s cleft lip repaired. He saw a specialist on Dec. 8, paid for by Medicaid, and now just has to visit a dentist for the next step in the treatment.

It has been a long journey for Gebeye to get to the United States. Seven years ago he walked for four days from his home in Barentu, Eritrea, to Ethiopia with only the clothes on his back.

He could have been arrested by authorities at any time. Eritrea is controlled by a provisional government that has suspended all civil liberties and has not been allowed any national elections since the government was founded in 1993.

As is widespread in the country, Gebeye was forced to do unpaid “national service” — nominally serving in the military, but basically amounting to a system of forced labor — and was not allowed to see his parents without getting a permit. National service is supposed to last 11/2 years but in practice is open-ended, Gebeye said.

After Gebeye left in 2004, his mother was questioned repeatedly by the Eritrean authorities about his whereabouts, a typical response when someone flees national service.

After five years of harassment she escaped to Ethiopia, although Gebeye’s father remains in Eritrea.
Once Gebeye reached Ethiopia, officials took him to the Shimelba refugee camp in the Tigray region of Ethiopia.

It was at the camp where he met Seyum, an Ethiopian native visiting relatives at the camp, in January 2007. They got married the following month and Fetwi was born almost a year later.
Shortly before his birth, they applied to come to the United States.

While waiting on an answer to their application, the couple continued to live in the refugee camp. Gebeye did not have a job, so Seyum’s mother tried to help them financially, but it was hard in the camp. Even if they moved out of the camp with a sponsor, Gebeye said he would not have been able to own his own business or become an Ethiopian citizen.

Despite the difficulties they now face, Gebeye said that being in America opens a world of opportunities.

“We couldn’t do anything before, ” Gebeye said. “Now, we can do so much.”

Jacob Reedy/UNIVERSITY OF NORTH FLORIDA
jacksonville.com