RIVERSIDE: UCR student fighting to bring sister here

student Serkadis Krohm, 22, sitting in her room in Riverside, holds a photo of her sister, Selam, 28, who was in an accident and has lost the function in her lower half of her body. Serkadis has started a blog to solicit donations and services to help her sister, who lives in Ethiopia, to come to the U.S.

After 11 years apart, Serkadis Amare Krohm tracked down the older sister she called “Mama Selam” during their childhood in Ethiopia.

 Far from a joyous reunion, Selam, 28, lay critically injured in a Turkish hospital after a bus crash. Now Krohm, who has conquered every challenge thrown her way, faces the toughest yet: To bring Selam to the U.S. for surgery to restore bowel and bladder control and physical therapy to regain independence.

Ethiopian officials have cleared Selam for a medical visa, but Krohm, a graduating senior in psychology at UC Riverside, must prove she has the resources to care for her sister.

Besides money, wheelchair-accessible housing and furnishings, Selam’s survival depends on pro bono or inexpensive medical, legal and rehabilitation services.

The Child Leader Project in Riverside, a nonprofit that organizes youths to raise awareness of social justice issues, launched the Selam Fund recently. Since then, donations have hit $8,000, said the group’s founder, Samantha Wilson, 24, a UCR alumna.

Earlier this month, the Citizens University Committee honored Krohm for her involvement with the Child Leader Project and for her volunteer work in an orphanage and with activists in India last summer.

At the awards ceremony, Krohm spoke movingly of her family. “We have been hurdling obstacles our entire lives,” she said. “Just when we thought we were getting a break, this happened. I understand life is not always fair, but it seems it has been especially unfair to us.”

Afterward, Chancellor Timothy P. White was so moved by her story that he sent out a letter urging the community to connect to a fundraising and informational blog, www.selamfund.blogspot.com. Krohm, a painfully private person, shares her life of love, loss, abandonment, abuse, escape and hope on the site.

“Serkadis Krohm is a person of impact and aspiration, of determination and persistence, of giving beyond self despite burdens and obstacles that are more than anyone should have to endure … particularly at age 22,” White wrote.

Since coming to California through an adoption, Krohm hid her past so others couldn’t pity her as a victim or glorify her as a saint. “I don’t like to tell my personal experiences and be judged on them,” she said.

“She just shines, day in and day out,” said Gil Oceguera, 61, who was Krohm’s principal at Vista del Lago High School in Moreno Valley. “She came from nothing, she got nothing and she still has nothing. But she doesn’t give up.”

Krohm and her four sisters grew up in Ethiopia outside Addis Ababa in a one-room house without electricity, running water or a private toilet. They slept together in one bed.

While their single mother worked as a cook, Selam, five years Krohm’s senior, bathed, dressed, fed, disciplined and took care of her sisters. Their mother died at 34 of tuberculosis. Against her wishes not to separate her children, authorities placed Krohm, 9, and her younger sister, Samrawit, 5, in an orphanage and turned the others out into the streets.

A family adopted Krohm and Samrawit 2½ years later, soon shattering the girls’ hopes for a better life. Their adopted family abused and neglected them, Krohm said.

Notified by observant neighbors, Child Protective Services removed the girls from their adoptive home after a year and placed them in foster care. Shuttling among eight residences was tough: the girls got separated and lost contact with their big sisters in Ethiopia. Samrawit, 18, is in foster care in Perris.

Four years ago Krohm learned that her eldest sister, Seble, had died and that the others, Mimi and Selam, worked as housekeepers in Somalia, Lebanon and Ethiopia.

Grief-stricken but without means to visit her older sisters, Krohm stayed in close touch with them and focused on school. Despite the instability and hardships of frequent moves, Krohm excelled in running cross county and long-distance track as well as scholastics.

“I always liked school in Ethiopia and I knew an education would take me far,” she said. When she graduated from Vista del Lago High in 2008 with a 3.76 GPA, the school named her both student and athlete of the year.

Through financial aid, loans and an athletic scholarship, Krohm enrolled at UCR through Guardian Scholars, a program that supports emancipated youth who have aged out of foster care.

Krohm helped raise money for the Child Leader Project to take eight of Riverside’s Norte Vista High School students to India last summer to experience a different culture.

While overseas, Krohm saw a photograph of Selam on Facebook, lying unconscious in a hospital bed in Turkey. Ironically, Selam was en route from Somalia to Greece in search of a better life when she was badly hurt in a bus accident in July.

The reunion was bittersweet. Krohm and her sister Mimi rushed to Antakya for a month to care for Selam, all sleeping together again in one bed.

When Selam stabilized, Krohm contacted her support network at home to help raise money and find services to save her sister. With Mimi as her caregiver, Selam is back in Ethiopia. As a high-risk patient, she’s likely to die because doctors can’t perform the necessary surgery. As a paralyzed woman, she’ll always be shunned, perceived by the culture as cursed by the devil, Krohm said.

Krohm’s dream is to spend Christmas with Selam.

“What she’s asking for is not too much, the bare minimum of what every one of us deserves. She’s living life as well as she possibly can,” said Tuppett Yates, founder of the Guardian Scholars and Krohm’s psychology professor. “All she’s asking for is that her sister be given the same opportunity.”
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