Blog

The students were presented with two poetic lines about angels & demons and asked to consider those competing concepts.

 ETHAN…channels his father’s struggles with these concepts from his Tanzanian roots to his American reality.

Angels & Demons

As a father of four, I have faced many Angels and Demons. My Angels include moments of beauty, love, inspiration, and spiritual discoveries. On the other hand, my Demons include moments of insanity, depression, and mental breakdowns.

My life has been a roller coaster of experiences. If you don’t mind, I would like to take a little time to explain parts of my journey. I was born in Tanzania; more specifically, Arusha. I was the firstborn in my family, followed by my three little sisters: Dorbibi, Mahabibi, and Mya. Dorbibi was a “demon”; she was the terror of the house. She would always snitch and be mama’s pet peeve. Mahabibi, on the other hand, was cool; she was the chill one of the family. Mya and I never really had much of a relationship; I was 11 when she was born, and during that time, I was sent to boarding school in Kenya by my father’s choice.

My father and I were very close; he was a loving family man. However, he would get angry when I did not focus on my studies or when I skipped school to play sports, so he decided to send me to Kenya to focus on my education. Being in Kenya was a different experience: no family, no good food…just me, myself, and soccer. During my second year of boarding school, I was called back home urgently. I thought my family was calling me back for vacation, but when I arrived, there was no vacation. There was only a crushed car in the driveway. I had been called back for my father’s funeral.

Two years after his funeral, I dropped out of boarding school to return to Arusha and work to provide for my mother and siblings. I worked on the streets selling food and washing cars, but I knew that wasn’t enough. I decided to make the hardest choice of my life: to leave Tanzania and go to America for a better opportunity. I told my sisters, my mother, and my aunts and uncles; they all tried to hold me back, but I could not watch my family suffer any longer.

When I arrived in America, it was different. I wasn’t used to being this alone. Instead of home being a country away, it was tens of thousands of miles away. I had many jobs when I first arrived, but in one of those places, I met an outstanding woman. Let’s call her “Baby.” She says she got her nickname from her mother, who thought she was done having children, so they called her Baby.

Baby and I had a son. I wanted to call him Omonde because he was born on a early Monday morning, but we just called him Ethan. Seventeen years have now passed, and life is still coming to haunt me. I have tried to make life easier for my kids so they don’t have to go through what I have endured, but some things in life you cannot stop. In a few months, I could be kicked out of the country, and my oldest will have to step up and be a man.

You may be wondering who I am? I am Mohamedi Sengumvia Jemadari.

Ethan Jobita Jemadari

February 6, 2026