My Third Brother

Misganaw Tesfaye, an Ethiopian exchange student, will always be my third brother. He lived with our Smith family for an entire year. We bonded and struggled for an entire year. At first, of course, I was apprehensive. A new boy living in my house who may not be able to speak very much if any English? This didn’t seem to be the ideal way to finish my middle school years, but of course I wasn’t about to be the kid who wouldn’t help a poor African boy and just say no. So I falsely told my parents that I had no problem with this plan and it seemed like it might even be fun.

I woke up the day he was supposed to land in Raleigh and thought to myself that today was the last day for an entire year that I could actually have fun and be myself. I would have to take on a fake personality and be as kind as I possibly could be for a full year. He arrived while I was at school so I did not meet him until my sister and I had driven home after school. He was dressed very nicely in a sweater vest and he had a distinct smell. He made eye contact with me and quickly jumped from his seat in order to greet me. He told me in very broken English, “My name is Misganaw.” I of course knew not what he said but assumed he had just told me his name. I then in return told him my name and then stepped back as he introduced himself to my sister. I was somewhat dazed and once again I thought to myself, “I have to live with this guy for a year?”

The weeks passed and I began to learn how to decipher his so called English. I also learned about how much he loved soccer, especially Arsenal, an English Premier Soccer club. He could only watch his team on occasion though due to the fact that he had six AP classes. As I still grow older, the fact that he was able to get A’s in all of his classes astonishes me even more. Inevitably, my relationship with him grew greatly in the first couple months of his stay. After all, both of my brothers were out of the house by now and the only other man in the house other than my father was Misganaw. We played soccer and basketball together and I even taught him how to throw and catch a football. But as in all relationships, we had our downs as well.


As we became more familiar with one another, we knew what bothered one another. He quickly learned the art of sarcasm, as my family almost speaks nothing but sarcasm. At first it was funny. He would hurl insults at me, I would throw some right back. It was all in good fun, but eventually, it ceased to be fun. I would become irritable or he would be in a bad mood and one of us would say something that the other didn’t want to hear. Because in reality he was still a guest and I was his host, we never went too far past the line, but far enough to cause some conflict. It was now a typical brother relationship.

As time passed and we learned to not always pick on one another, we began to cement our relationship. The weeks flew by and summer was right around the corner. Misganaw was scheduled to go to Camp Seagull for about six weeks as soon as school finished. This was in no way our final farewell, but more so a practice run. Although I almost feel bad to say I didn’t miss him very much during that time period, I was not the only male at home. One of my brothers moved back into the house for the summer and I was able to play with him instead of Misganaw. In a way, this was a good thing. It helped ease the pain when he finally left for good.

It was a pleasant summer afternoon when he returned from camp. One of the other exchange students that had also attended the camp needed a place to stay so that he could catch the plane ride early the next morning, so we brought him in too. We had a very nice cook out that night and everything was very nice, but it all almost seems like a blur now. All I can remember is when I put my head down to sleep that night, I had promised myself that I wasn’t going to cry when he departed. I did in fact keep myself from releasing my tears, but this in no way meant that they were not there. I hugged him and said goodbye for the last time, wondering if he felt the same way that I did at that moment.

To this day I keep in contact with Misganaw, through occasional emails or through facebook. I once posted a comment on his wall to notify him that it was snowing at our house. He was fortunate enough to be able to play in the snow while he was here in the states and I thought that he would enjoy hearing that it was once again pouring down the fluffy precipitation. I do not know if I will ever see him again, but there is one thing that I do know. He will always be a part of our family, and more importantly, he will always be the third brother that I never had.