Editor’s Note: Students of UCSF highlights the diverse experiences and personal journeys that shape the UCSF community. Share your own story or nominate a colleague by emailing us at synapse@ucsf.edu.
You can sometimes spot first year medical student Hiab Ghebregherghis on the basketball courts of Millberry Gym or walking along 2nd Avenue near his home in the Inner Sunset. But if you’d ask him where he’s from, he’d say: It depends.
For Hiab, 2nd Avenue is one of many landing spots in his life. While he’s lived in Portland, Oregon, Kenya and Uganda, his home remains in Etritrea, the country in Northeast Africa where he was born and raised. Bordered by Ethiopia and the Red Sea, Eritrea is where Hiab considers his first home and formed his first sense of community.
“You know how they say, ‘It takes a whole village to raise a kid?’ That is definitely the case for where I come from,” Hiab said.
“All the neighborhood kids know each other, and I don’t just mean, ‘Oh that one neighbor here, or that kid from school.’ The whole zipcode knows each other. So there’s like 100-120 kids doing our thing.”
Hiab speaks fondly about his childhood. As a kid, Hiab would share the bigger half of his ration of bread with his best friend, who would always do the same. He would help his elderly neighbors with planting seeds in their garden. And when he would play outside until the late hours of the night, all 30 of his friends would find someone’s courtyard to crash in. There was no concept of “paying someone back” or “asking for favors in return.” In Eritrea, sharing is instinctive and generosity feels second nature.
Eritrea is a militarized country with a longstanding conflict with neighboring Ethiopia. Since the country required military service, Hiab’s family decided to move for safety. At just 12 years old, Hiab embarked on an odyssey with his family — navigating government red tape, securing U.S. Diversity Visas that routed them through Uganda, crossing borders into Kenya—before finally touching down in Portland, Oregon.
Upon immigrating to the U.S. more than 10 years ago, Hiab quickly noticed the differences between American and Eritrean culture; back home, dozens of kids could take shelter at a random person’s house after a long day outside with no questions asked. In America, he’d have to ask for permission and bring his belongings to a friend’s house. Back home, he would help his neighbor plant seeds in their garden; in America, mowing a neighbor’s lawn resulted in praise and was encouraged with monetary incentive.
Of all of the cultural differences, this concept of money and wealth was by far the most distinct. Hiab proclaims himself “bad with money.” In America, that could mean starting late on investing in a 401k. Instead, Hiab’s financial approach is to share his earnings with his friends, family, or whoever is in need—again, without question. So his paycheck is quickly spent on, among many things, treating a friend to dinner or helping his sister with tuition. As for himself, Hiab is content with having little.
“If it’s not too cold, I would be the happiest man if I slept in a cardboard box. I’d be fine,” he said. “I think I’m okay with being broke, and I think it’s because where I’m from, you’re excited just to have an electrical outlet.”
Hiab says this lightheartedly, in his nature of humorous storytelling. But his words are far from hyperbolic and come from a place of truth. The values that Hiab embodies today — community, service, minimalism — have been shaped by the place and the people that raised him.
For Hiab, the natural step in pursuing service — the thing that came most naturally to him — was medicine.
“The lifelong thing that I can do is service. Whether it’s for your city, your immediate community, that’s what you’re living for,” Hiab said. “And I truly believe that’s what everyone lives for.”
Ultimately, Hiab hopes to serve through medicine in Eritrea, returning to the one place in the world where he says he doesn’t feel like an immigrant. Because living somewhere, he says, is not the same as belonging to it. Home is the grassy fields in which you play as a kid, the roads you walk along at dusk, the familiar brick buildings you pass after school.
For many born and raised in the United States, this feeling of being ‘at home’ comes instinctively. But despite having lived in Portland and now San Francisco for over 10 years, Hiab said that the immigrant experience has left him feeling out of place, a feeling that continues to point him back toward home, Eritrea.
“There’s something about staying in one place where you were actually born and raised,” Hiab said. “If I went back, I could be like, ‘I could stand here and protect this place.’”
