Cedar Rapids family trying to help young Ethiopian relatives immigrate

How do you calculate the value of five lives saved?

Lemi Tilahun of Cedar Rapids ponders that for his five cousins, ages 3 to 14, whom his family is trying to bring to the U.S. from Ethiopia.

“You look at the complete equation - the survival is pretty much day-to-day for them - I can almost just say it would be a waste of potential (for them to stay there), and not just one potential but times five,” the 22-year-old said.

The children's mother, Hajo Tosa, is near death with brain cancer. Their father already is dead, the victim of malaria several years ago.

They live in a mud hut in a rural village in south-central Ethiopia on the Horn of Africa.

The hope is the children soon immigrate to Cedar Rapids, the same as Tilahun did with his parents and four siblings 11 years ago. His parents, Shuna Tosa and Tamene Gelashe of Cedar Rapids, have spent the past few months trying to gain governmental approval to bring the children to Iowa. The two Tosas are sisters.

Tosa, 45, and Gelashe, 52, hope to hear soon on an application that could lead to visas allowing the children to enter the country. The married couple adopted the children in Ethiopia in January with the consent of the kids' mother.

They want for them the same as they sought for their kids. A good home life. An education. A chance.

“They get everything here, that's why,” Tosa said.

Hard life

There, they have close to nothing. The village is almost completely lacking in infrastructure, including adequate roads and running water. During the dry season, as it is now, people walk up to three hours for clean water.

Hajo Tosa has been sick for a few years but has greatly worsened in the past several months. When Shuna Tosa visited in January, her sister was blind, unable to talk and immobile. Villagers held a ceremony for the sick woman that included sacrificing a goat.

Doctors from Germany, Pakistan, India and South Korea have been consulted and, after seeing an MRI of the tumor, determined there was nothing to do.

Working as a housekeeper at University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, Shuna Tosa searched for medical advice here, too, even hoping her sister could come to Iowa for treatment.

Dr. David Hasan, a neurosurgeon at the hospital, reviewed an MRI of Hajo Tosa earlier this year. What he saw was a very large tumor at the skull base.

Surgery would be high risk and they'd be lucky to remove 50 percent of the mass, he concluded. Radiation and chemotherapy were not options.

Nothing can be done medically, he said.

Offering help

But hospital employees have helped in other ways. Most notable has been fundraising to defray costs that include plane tickets, paperwork fees and to prepare for the possible addition of five children to Tosa and Gelashe's household. About $15,000 has come in. An account is set up at Hills Bank and Trust Co.

Nursing assistant Barron Swenning, who has played a lead role in the effort, said it's Shuna Tosa's kindhearted and hardworking nature that has made people care so much.

“There's been some people with tears in their eyes giving me money,” he said.

Tosa recently took a second job to help with the immigration-related expenses.

The story has also touched Westminster Presbyterian Church in Cedar Rapids, where the family worships. The church raised $7,000 for the family last fall with a traditional Ethiopian dinner of vegetables and meat on flatbread, plus coffee.

Dale Crosier, a church elder who has known the family since they immigrated, said he's more impressed by Tosa and Gelashe than his fellow church members.

“In a way, it's kind of a small thing for the rest of us to help them,” said Crosier, 82. “They're extending their home and their livelihood to help” the five children.

Gelashe, who like his wife works two jobs, said their “dream” is to give his sister-in-law's kids the life their children have received in Iowa.

“That is why we are here, to open opportunities,” he said.

The family had some luck in its immigration efforts, getting green cards through a visa lottery system run by the U.S. State Department. The oldest son is still in Africa, working through the visa process.

The seven family members here became U.S. citizens in 2006.

Tilahun knows firsthand his cousins would face an adjustment coming here. But he thinks they'd adapt fairly easy.

“That's a very good age where you're not really impacted by the environment as much or by the change as you would be as an adult,” he said.

Just look to him and his siblings for proof. Two older sisters work in Chicago and Indianapolis, a younger brother studies at Kirkwood Community College and another is a junior at Cedar Rapids Kennedy High School.

Tilahun graduates from Coe College this month with a degree in political science and economics and a minor in Spanish.

Adding five school-age kids would test any family, but Tosa cast off any worry with a smile.

“It's OK,” she said. “I can make that.”