From Eritrean rebel to single SoCal mom

“I’m proud, very proud of how good my four daughters are doing in school,” says single mother Hadas Goitom. “I raised them to be role models for each other. It’s not only me. They can see how well they are doing. And then always, I talk about my story.”
   
And what a story it is.
 
   The 46-year-old woman was born in Eritrea, a former Italian colony that was occupied by the British in 1941, for a time was federated with Ethiopia by the United Nations, and then engaged in a three-decades-long war for independence against Ethiopian emperor Haile Salassie.

Hadas was part of that struggle as a rebel freedom fighter from the age of 12 until she fled her homeland at 25. Then she lived in a refugee camp in Sudan for two years before joining her parents and siblings in Los Angeles in 1991, all of whom had left the war-torn nation earlier.

The father of her children, who was also Eritrean, returned home, leaving Hadas with four daughters to care for. “I had no childhood in Eritrea, and that is why I stayed here so my girls could have a normal childhood,” she explains.

“When I was a teenager, I came from war. I fought for independence from when I was 12 years old for almost 14 years. So I didn’t know about being a teenager. I didn’t know about school. And by the time I got pregnant, I just wanted to have my kids and take care of them.”

For more than a dozen years, the refugee-headed family lived in a housing project, barely surviving on government assistance. First daughter Yewhna Tefery, 18, went to public school in the crime-ridden Crenshaw district up until first grade and would often come home crying from being bullied.
 

“When I was a teenager, I came from war. I fought for independence from when I was 12 years old for almost 14 years. So I didn’t know about being a teenager. I didn’t know about school.”
— Hadas Goitom

That’s when her mother, an Orthodox Catholic, discovered St. John the Evangelist School and was able to enroll Yewhna with the help of financial aid from the parochial school. Over the years, daughters Fairus, 16, Neyat, 14, and Selena, 12, Tefery all attended St. John the Evangelist. Today, Fairus is a junior and Neyat a freshman at St. Mary’s Academy in Inglewood, while Selena is a seventh-grader at nearby St. John Chrysostom School. The family now lives in Inglewood.

And Yewhna, after graduating from St. Mary’s Academy last year, is finishing her freshman year at the University of Southern California with a prestigious Gates Millennium Scholarship, which provides seamless support for minority students from undergraduate work all the way through graduate or professional school.

Yewhna, Fairus, Neyat and Selana have all been supported during their elementary or high school education by tuition awards from the Catholic Education Foundation. Currently, Fairus is receiving a scholarship from a St. Mary’s Academy alumna and her husband.

Learning respect

Catholic school is the best thing that ever happened to us, because first is education and second is discipline,” points out Hadas, who is a Certified Nurse’s Assistant, working at a convalescent home in Culver City. “They have to learn to respect people, and they also have to learn about Christianity. Here at St. Mary’s Academy and St. John Chrysostom they have good manners and they teach the love of God. I want them to have my Catholic faith as well as a good education.
   
“As a single mother, I cannot handle four girls,” she adds with a knowing grin. “So I am getting help, too, as a single mother. They are learning the values I want them to learn, having respect and discipline in everything. By sending them to Catholic school, the teachers are helping me raise them, too, to be good women.”
  
Her daughters readily agree.
   
Last semester, Yewhna earned two As and two Bs in the demanding pre-med program at USC, but still thinks she should have done better. At St. Mary’s Academy she graduated with an almost perfect 3.95 GPA. She traces her academic drive back to two sources: her mother and her Catholic school education.
 
“My mom had this rule with me and my sisters where you can’t watch TV during the week,” says the teenager, who lives in a dorm at USC.  “And we have to maintain good grades. If we brought home Cs, that was not acceptable. Bs were acceptable, but it was always aim for the A.

“But she wasn’t too strict. It was like we kind of knew ourselves that my mom didn’t have any money to pay for us to go to college, so I had to pull off these really good grades to earn a scholarship.”

Recalling her elementary and high school years, the teenager couldn’t hide her emotions. “I loved St. John’s,” Yewhna says. “I didn’t want to graduate. But I loved St. Mary’s, and I also didn’t want to leave there. The teachers were so good to me, and it was through my counselor that I got my scholarship. That school is just wonderful. Like, I want to send my kids there.”

Fairus, the junior at St. Mary’s Academy, carries a straight-A grade point average of 4.0 and is president of her class. She wants to be a mechanical engineer because she “loves to build things.” When asked if she is naturally bright or simply studies a lot, she defers to the latter. Because she runs track and field along with cross country, she usually doesn’t get home until around seven o’clock. After a quick supper, it’s hitting the books for a good two hours before going to bed. The next morning it’s often up at six o’clock to get in extra study time.
   
“The values and things that they teach us here I can take them with me when I grow up,” she says. “There’s strict rules, and the teachers let us know what we have to do to succeed: responsibility, accountability to study and work hard. That’s going to follow me wherever I go. So I know if I learn that now, then it’ll be easy for me to apply it when I get older.”

Freshman Neyat nods. “I’ve learned a lot here, mainly responsibility, too,” she reports. “It wasn’t really hard going from St. John’s to St. Mary’s because my sisters helped me a lot, and everybody here was really welcoming and understanding. And Yewhna was a big role model. She was like the second person we would go to if my mom wasn’t there. And we still call her a lot at USC. Whenever we need her help, she’s there.”

And Selena, the 12-year-old seventh-grader, believes going to St. John Chrysostom School is simply making her a better all-around person. “It helps going to a Catholic school because I can learn my religion and where I come from,” she says. “So it really, like, helps me to grow. I don’t really study a lot, except for a big test. But I know when I get to high school I’ll have to study harder.”

Inspiring

All four girls also agree their mother is one amazing woman --- from freedom fighter in Eritrea to single mom in Southern California. They call her “phenomenal,” “inspiring” and their number one role model.
 
Hadas can’t hold back a smile.

“I want to thank everyone very much for giving my girls a Catholic education,” she says. “I don’t know how to appreciate it more. I don’t have words to explain everything. I say one day I’d like to play the lottery and win so I can help Catholic education. Whatever Catholic education has done for my family, I want to pay back.”