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. "He’s 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 wasn’t sent here to do that but that was his interest and now he’s 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.