Relatives and Nest members welcomed an Eritrean family of four to Saskatoon on November 7, 2024, capping a six-year effort to bring the two sisters and the two children to the city. They were reunited with their brother Zemichael and aunt Saba Andu.

Nest originally sponsored Tsega and her two children in 2018. But the application was rejected. Nest tried again in 2020 and added Tsega’s sister Bethelihem to the application. Nest obtained sponsorship spots through the Canadian Lutheran World Relief.

Tsega and her children fled mandatory military conscription in Eritrea in 2017, seeking asylum in Shegerab refugee camp in Sudan. It was the “worst three months of my life,” Tsega said.

Bethelihem fled Eritrea’s compulsory military service in 2019, describing it as a form of slavery. She found refuge in Ethiopia’s Endabaguna camp and then at the UN’s Hitsats refugee camp, where she joined her sister Tsega and the two children.

One year later, soldiers stormed the camp and raped, beat and kidnapped hundreds of Eritrean refugees. Hundreds more were killed as punishment for escaping military service, in what became known as the “Hitsats Massacre.”

“We were trapped in a shelter in the refugee camp surrounded by the civil war,” Tsega explained a week after her arrival in Saskatoon. “We could not go outside for many weeks. We had no water. No food. People were very hungry.”

The sisters and the children survived, but the camp was destroyed. They fled to Addis Ababa.

“As a refugee, you live day by day. As long as I was alive with my sister and my children, I did not complain,” Tsega said.

Tsega’s two children, Saron, age 10 and Smret age 7 (who already speak three languages including English) are looking forward to starting school in Saskatoon.