Zebiba Shekhia

Building the Impossible Zebiba Shekhia

The Mothers knew what they needed: a high school for our girls. It's an impossible request, for these mothers barely subsist in the Eritrean refugee camps in the Eastern Sudan. It is a hostile, barren environment, devoid of water, food, even basic sanitation. Zebiba Shekhia and the Eritrean people had endured so much up to this point: the brutality and genocide perpetrated on Eritrea by Haile Selassie and then the notorious dictator, Mengistu; the hardship of fleeing her own country under cover of night as the war between Ethiopia and Eritrea raged overhead. She made it to America, but would the same determination to find a better life hold her through her darkest moments? Would she be able to keep her promise and find a way to get that high school for girls built? Be inspired by Zebiba's tenacity as she found a way to help the mothers and daughters of her homeland find a better life through education.