In the fall of 1964, I went to UCLA for a twelve week intensive training program to become a Peace Corps volunteer in Ethiopia. At that time, the Peace Corps was a popular program, and thousands of volunteers were being trained at various universities throughout the United States (later they would train in-country in an effort to provide more realistic conditions). Most training programs in 1964 were scheduled during the summer moths, given that most recruits were recent college and university graduates. While I had been accepted into the Peace Corps, I had not yet selected a specific country training program, and had decided to spend the summer traveling on a motorcycle around Europe with friends. When I returned in late August, there were two programs that interested me - a rural health program in Senegal and secondary school teaching in Ethiopia. While I was drawn to Senegal because of my French language skills, I chose Ethiopia because it seemed more challenging. And so, in September, it was off to UCLA, where dozens of other trainees gathered in the Westwood section of town to take intensive language classes, along with cultural and historical orientation courses. It was during that time that many enduring friendships were formed, and which have lasted ever since.

We finished our training program in December, and returned to our respective homes before converging in New York to take a TWA flight to Madrid, and then to Addis Ababa. We landed in Addis in January 1965, and were taken to the Itege Hotel and Gondar Pension in the heart of the city. While we had mastered enough language skills to navigate ourselves around the city by the point, our first task was the assignment to our respective villages and towns, and their associated schools. Since we had a photo album from our training, the matching process was simplified as both new volunteers and staff sorted out the choices.

I soon met Jack Caraco, a volunteer who had spent his first year in Addis and then had gone to Emdeber, in southwest Shoa, to join David Levine and his wife Nancy, to establish the newly developing secondary school program. It was to be a grade by grade expansion, and the volunteers worked with Ethiopian national service teachers as well as teachers from India, mostly Kerala, in the project. Jack noted my French language skills and said that Emdeber had a wonderful local Catholic mission priest by the name of Abba François Marcos, who had been schooled in Harar at the same French language school as had Emperor Haile Selassie during his formative years. And it was with that information that I joined fellow volunteer Kathy Moore to travel with Jack to Emdeber.

With provisions we purchased in the Addis marcato, we then drove our Land Rover pickup truck for over four hours to Walkité, after which we then turned left to make the 30 km trip over a track that forced some seven streams, to Emdeber. When we arrived, we stayed initially at the Catholic mission, where we met Abba François, Abba Petros Dubale, and Abba Menaye. We also soon began our teaching at the Emdeber secondary school, and my first assignment was to handle five sections of ninth grade history students. We had blackboards and chalk, but precious few texts, and so I began preparing stenciled materials that eventually covered the ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grade curriculum that had been prescribed by the Ethiopia Ministry of Education. While University history faculty eventually published updated texts, for a while, my stenciled materials were distributed by the Peace Corps to several schools for use by other volunteers.

Jack finished up his stay in the spring of 1965, and then went back to the U.S. where he planned to pursue medical studies. David and Nancy stayed until the spring of 1966, during which time we helped to organize the building of a traditional Gurage sauer bét library, a science laboratory, and a school latrine, among other projects. We also became involved in the Gurage Road Construction Organization, a dynamic organization led by very capable leaders from the area who supervised the construction of an all weather road from Walkité to Emdeber, and eventually led to the creation of a 300 km. network that connected some of the more remote parts of Gurage country to the rest of the national road network.

David and Nancy left in 1966, as did Kathy Moore, and in their place came a stream of other volunteers. Mary Higgins, Bernard Coughlin, Anne Peters, Kathy Cash, Lee and Carol Irwin, and Charlie Ipcar were those with whom I worked, and during which time I became one of the longest standing teachers in the town. What led to that decision was first the choice of whether to renew for a year or terminate in the spring of 1966. I chose to renew for a year. Because I had become more involved with community life and the preparation of history texts, I decided, however, to stay an additional year as a contract teacher with the Ethiopian Ministry of Education. That brought my tour up to the spring of 1968, when I finally left Ethiopia to return to the United States and begin my graduate studies in Economics.

My stay in Emdeber left an enduring impression that has lasted to this day. While I took few photos in the beginning, I later began to assemble a more detailed collection. In the files that are attached are samples of those pictures.

The first is a set of black and white photos, most of which were taken by fellow volunteer Dick Coolidge during a visit in 1966. The color pictures were taken mostly by me and have been organized into various themes.

I close this introduction with noting that I made two subsequent trips back to Emdeber. The first was in 1982, when Mengistu Hailemariam had presided over the coup that had overthrown Emperor Haile Selassie in 1973, and during which time Ethiopia went through periodic droughts, an expanding civil war between Ethiopia and Eritrea, and an internal reign of terror that left many innocent victims in its wake. My 1982 trip was part of a speaking tour I took under the State Department to various countries to address questions of economic and international poicy. I met Abba François in Addis, where he was then living in retirement, and managed to travel to Emdeber to find Ato Berta and his wife Atsede still living in the same house, as well as several other neighbors.

My second trip was in 1990. I had just finished a consultancy on energy conservation in Khartoum, and was invited by the U.S. State Department to address members of the national planning council on international economic policy. Following that address, I then went to Emdeber to find that while Ato Berta had passed away, his widow Atsede was still there, as were several others from my stay. In the years since, my friend David Levine has made a trip, in 1991, as has my former student Deneke Hailemariam, in 2004. Their photos document the continuing evolution of institutions in Gurage country. Some of the changes are hopeful, but they unfold against a backdrop of continuing poverty and internal strife.