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California Congressman Returns to Ethiopian Roots

   Peter Heinlein | Adis Ababa  March 24, 2011
   John Garamendi hugs his wife, Patti (file photo)

Photo: AP

   John Garamendi hugs his wife, Patti (file photo)

   A California congressman and his wife are in Ethiopia to celebrate the
   50th  anniversary of the [1]Peace Corps at the place where they served
   as  volunteers in the 1960s.  The anniversary has revived memories of
   the Peace Corpsâ key role in ending a war that killed 70,000 people.
   John  Garamendi  leans back in his chair as he recalls the life he and
   his  new  wife Patti found when they arrived as Peace Corps volunteers
   in Emperor Haile Selassieâs Ethiopia in 1966.
   "We  were  to  be English teachers. We wound up teaching the sixth and
   seventh  grade," recalled Garamendi. "Patti not only taught school but
   set  up a womenâs program, a childrenâs program, a pre-school program,
   and I started doing community development work."
   Previous trip 
   This is not the Garamendis' first trip back to Ethiopia. They returned
   in  1984 to help when famine struck the countryside and have been back
   several  times  since. Patti came in 1994 as associate director of the
   Peace  Corps  when  the Ethiopia program was revived after a period of
   absence during the dictatorial Dergue regime.
   But  this  week,  50  years  after  U.S.  President  John  F.  Kennedy
   established  the  Peace  Corps,  now  Congressman  John  Garamendi  of
   California  returned with Patti and the youngest of their six children
   to the town of Metu for an emotional reunion with friends they made so
   many years ago.
   "It  was wonderful to see the progress that the town and community had
   made,"  he  said. "And one thing the students said as we were gathered
   there  at  the  school  was, you taught us two very important words, a
   four  letter  word  H-E-L-P,  that we were to help each other, and the
   other  was âcommunityâ, that we were a community and we would together
   do well. And they had indeed."
   Peace mission
   The California congressman recalls another visit to the Horn of Africa
   in  the  late  1990s as part of a peacekeeping mission when the region
   was  engulfed  in war between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Garamendi says the
   mission  succeeded largely because both Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles
   Zenawi and Eritrean President Isaias Afewerki trusted the Peace Corps.
   "My  team  was invited to meet with prime minister of Ethiopia and the
   president  of  Eritrea. Why? Because theyâd been taught by Peace Corps
   and  they knew our agenda was peace," Garamendi said. "We had no other
   agenda.  So  we  met  with  both heads of state talking about the war,
   talking  about  what  their goals were. And in those communications we
   saw  a  path  for  peace.  Those  concepts  we  had  discovered in our
   communication  with the heads of state⦠became the essential elements
   of the peace negotiations and the settlement." Â
   Garamendi  and  his team of Peace Corps veterans were later invited to
   witness  the  signing  of  the  Algiers peace agreement that ended the
   two-year war.
   Changing lives 
   The  Peace  Corps  left  Ethiopia a second time during that war, which
   claimed  70,000  lives,  then  returned  again three years ago. The 75
   current   volunteers  do  HIV/AIDS  prevention  work  and  agriculture
   projects.  But  Garamendi  says just as in the early days, Peace Corps
   people  bring  a  variety  of skills to the places where they work and
   live.
   "Now  one  of  the  Peace  Corps volunteers in [the town of] Bonga has
   become  the  IT  expert  for  the  region," noted Garamendi. "Heâs now
   traveling  not only in Bonga but in other communities around that area
   helping  with  information  technology, Internet, repairing computers,
   setting  up  programs and the like. He wasnât sent here to do that but
   that  was  his  interest  and  now  heâs become the regional expert on
   that."
   More volunteers 
   Ethiopia  Peace  Corps  Director Nwando Diallo says there are plans to
   increase  the number of volunteers to at least 200 in the next year or
   so.  That  number will include teams of English teachers following the
   trail John and Patti Garamendi blazed more than 40 years ago.
   Congressman  Garamendi  notes,  however,  that  it  is  not  only  the
   recipient countries who benefit from Peace Corps work.  He points out
   there  are  200,000  American  men  and  women  who  gained  a greater
   understanding  of  other  cultures,  religions  and  the  struggles of
   peoples through volunteering abroad.

References

   1. http://www.peacecorps.gov/

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