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Monday, February 17, 2014

Tesfagiorgis's Story: The Dark Days - A Guest Post by Doug Eadie

Doug Eadie (R) with Tesfagiorgis Wondimagegnehu

This month, Fabulous Florida Writers is pleased to welcome guest blogger Doug Eadie.  The author of 20 books on board-CEO partnerships, his two latest titles, Governing at the Top and The Board-Savvy CEO were released last month.  In this post, Doug shows his personal side by sharing the riveting story that inspired his blog, "Entwined Lives."  Doug was our featured author on March 3, 2013I AM LIVING NOW AT
PEACE

“I am
living now at peace – of course, doing everything I can to forget my dark
days. ”These are Tesfagiorgis
Wondimagegnehu’s closing words in the video we’d just filmed in my room at the
Jupiter International Hotel in Addis Ababa the last morning of my ten-day
return visit to Ethiopia this past May.Sitting across from Tesfagiorgis, keeping my eye on the camera as he
tells the story of his experience in the late 1970s under the military group –
the Derg – that had overthrown Emperor Haile Selassie, I now understand fully
how terribly dark those days were for my Ethiopian friend. And I realize what a miracle it is that Tesfagiorgis
is alive and well – happily married to Almaz with two beautiful children,
Bersabel and Natnael – and that we are together again 45 years after saying
goodbye when I returned to the States from Ethiopia. 

AT HOME IN ADDIS
ABABA FOR 2 ½ YEARS

I’d grown very close to Tesfagiorgis during
the 2 ½ years he’d lived with me and my Peace Corps housemates while he studied
and we taught at Tafari Makonnen School in Addis Ababa. By the time I headed back to the States for
graduate school in June 1967, Tesfagiorgis had become, I realize looking back, very
much my kid brother. A very serious,
hard working student, Tesfagiorigis also had an easy going manner, a beautiful
smile that we saw often, and an infectious sense of humor. He was the perfect companion for our long
Sunday walks around Addis and into the Entoto hills overlooking the capital
city. He was also blessed with that
pride and sensitivity that characterize Ethiopians and make them such
attractive friends. 

My last few
weeks in Ethiopia the summer of 1967 were so busy I didn’t really think much
about the impact my leaving might have on Tesfagiorgis and the other Tafari
Makonnen student living with us then, Tariku Belay.  There were final
examination papers to mark, graduate school arrangements to make, travel plans
to finalize, packing to do – so much in so little time.  Anyway, Tesfagiorgis
and Tariku, soon to graduate from one of Ethiopia’s finest secondary schools, were
seemingly on their way to a promising future. I needn’t worry, I thought; they were well launched.  Finally, June 8 arrived, and I left for Bole
Airport around 7 a.m. after hugging Tesfagiorgis and Tariku goodbye, carrying
the letter the boys had handed me as I walked out the door of the house we’d
shared for over two years. Not long
after my Ethiopian Airlines flight took off, I opened the boys’ letter. I was moved to tears reading their parting
words. I had to laugh, though, as I’m
sure they knew I would – in light of my having taught English at Tafari
Makonnen – when I read these words: “Whenever we are in a trouble, in the
future, we will have a dream about something impossible. We will make conditional sentences such
as: If Mr. Eadie were here, we would
tell him this and he would do that . .  If Mr. Eadie were here we would go to
the mountains . .  .”By the way, it gave
me great pleasure to email a copy of this letter, which I’d saved for 45 years,
to Tesfagiorgis and Tariku shortly before returning to Ethiopia.  They never imagined they’d see it again. 

LOST AND MIRACULOUSLY
FOUND

So the
years passed quickly; life went on as it’s wont to do. Tesfagiorgis and I corresponded now and then
as he completed his undergraduate work at what was then Haile Selassie I University
and began his career in public administration at the Ethiopian government’s
Central Personnel Agency. In the
meantime, I completed my graduate work, launched a career in nonprofit
management, and eventually married and started a family. Sometime in 1974, after Emperor Haile
Selassie’s overthrow by the Derg, Tesfagiorgis and I fell out of touch. As I followed events in Ethiopia in the New
York Times in the mid to late 1970s, I realized that attempting to contact
Tesfagiorgis might actually put his life in danger. I stopped writing, and no more letters from
Tesfagiorgis arrived.  Thus did our physical separation become a complete
break. By the time the new century
arrived, I assumed Tesfagiorgis and Tariku had very likely died under the
brutal dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam.  It was clear that thousands of young
educated Ethiopians had been imprisoned, tortured and executed by 1991, when Mengistu
was driven out of Ethiopia, and not one of the many Ethiopians I had met in the
States over the years could tell me anything about Tesfagiorgis or Tariku. 

Now it’s
November 2008, not long before Thanksgiving, and I’m settling into my hotel
room in Seattle, where I’ll be speaking at a conference the next day.  Calling
in for my voice mail, I’m bowled over by the first message, from a man whose
voice I immediately know:“If you are
the Douglas Eadie who taught at Tafari Makonnen School in the 1960s, I am your
former student, Tariku Belay. ”He left
his number, which I called right away and left a message. We finally talked when I got back home to
Tampa Bay, and it turned out he was teaching in a high school in
Minneapolis. He’s been in prison under
the Derg, had escaped and lived as a refugee in the Sudan before coming to the
States. He couldn’t tell me anything
about Tesfagiorgis. Staying in touch by
phone and email, Tariku and I finally arrange to meet in Minneapolis in March
2011, the day before I am to speak at a conference. The afternoon before leaving for Minneapolis,
Tariku calls with exciting news. He’s
discovered that Tesfagiorgis is alive and well, retired and living with his
wife in Addis Ababa. His daughter is
studying in the States, in Boston. He
gives me Tesfagiorgis’s telephone number, which I call right after we hang
up. Tesfagiorgis is home and answers the
phone. We are both soon in tears. “This is a miracle,” he says.  I wholeheartedly agree. 

RETURNING TO ETHIOPIA
AFTER ALMOST50 YEARSI began to
think seriously about returning to Ethiopia after my 45-year absence that fall
at the 50th anniversary celebration of the Peace Corps in
Washington, where I reunited with a former Tafari Makonnen student, Abebe (now
known as “Abe”) Abraham and with former Addis Ababa housemates Garber Davidson,
David Karro, and Mike Altman. Meanwhile,
Tesfagiorgis and I had been carrying on a robust email correspondence, and the
more I learned about his life after my departure back in 1967, the more
miraculous our discovering each other seemed. My wife, Barbara, and my kids, Jenny and Will, strongly encouraged me to
make the return trip, pointing out that I wasn’t getting any younger and might
some day terribly regret missing this wonderful opportunity. What sealed the deal was getting an email
early in 2012 from an Ethiopian named Berhane Mogese, who was practicing law in
Addis Ababa. “I do not think you
remember me,” he wrote, but his face came immediately to mind. I’d met Berhane, then a high school student,
my first week in Addis Ababa in September 1964, and although he hadn’t studied
at Tafari Makonnen, we’d seen each other several times during my three-year
stay in Addis.  In fact, right after
seeing his name on the email, I walked down the hall to our storage room and
dug a folder of old photos out of my files; there was the photo that Berhane
had sent me on July 7, 1967.His
inscription on the back said, “We may see each other some time in life. I shall miss you. ”OK, that was it.  Could anyone be more strongly called to do
something, I thought, and I started to map out my return trip. 

Now let me
tell you some of what I learned about Tesfagiogis’s experience under the Derg
as we sat across from each other in my hotel room in Addis Ababa last May,
filming the video clip, and I think you’ll agree that our reuniting is, indeed,
a miracle. 

TESFAGIORGIS’ DANGEROUS
DOUBLE LIFE UNDER THE DERG

I don’t
recall that Tesfagiorgis and I spent much time chatting about Ethiopian
politics while he was living with me and my Peace Corps housemates, but his
political awakening wasn’t long in coming after his graduation from Tafari
Makonnen and enrollment in Haile Selassie I University. These were heady and hopeful times, as
students throughout Ethiopia, sensing that the old feudal order that Emperor Haile
Selassie represented was near death, saw a wonderful opportunity to play a
leading role in creating a new, presumably more democratic, Ethiopia. Tesfagiorgis certainly jumped in with both
feet, for example, participating in
demonstrations against the Ian Smith regime in Southern Rhodesia and the
government’s banning of the Ethiopian University Students Union and passing out
leaflets protesting the murder of a student movement leader. Indeed, Tesfagiorgis was one of a small
number of fourth year students at the University suspended for a full year
because of their refusal to stop boycotting classes until imprisoned student
leaders were released. 

The “dark days” that Tesfagiorgis so
fervently hopes to forget began not long after the group of military officers
known as the Derg overthrew the tottering regime of Emperor Haile Selassie in
1974.As the revolt against the Emperor
was gaining momentum, Tesfagiorgis received his bachelor’s degree from the
University and began his public administration career at the government’s
Central Personnel Agency. He continued
to be politically active, joining one of the new political parties that emerged
in these tumultuous times:the Ethiopian
Peoples’ Revolutionary Party (EPRP), which eventually became passionately and
violently opposed to the Derg. He also
assumed leadership roles in the new political structure established by the
Derg, being elected chairman of one of the 283 local urban dwellers
associations known as “kebeles,” and also of the political discussion forum that
had been created in the Central Personnel Agency. When the Derg declared all-out war on EPRP, empowering
kebeles to arrest, torture, and execute Ethiopians suspected of being EPRP
supporters, Tesfagiorgis found himself leading an extremely stressful and
highly dangerous double life that eventually resulted in his imprisonment and
near-execution. 

THE STORY OF GONDERIT’S
ESCAPE AND EXECUTION

One of the dramatic
stories Tesfagiorgis told me about his double life concerned a female kebele
colleague, Gonderit Girmaye. One day an
official of the security arm of the Ministry of the Interior walked into
Tesfagiorgis’s office at the kebele and asked that Gonderit be summoned. When she appeared, she was informed she was
needed for urgent work at the Ministry. Agreeing to accompany the officer to the Ministry, Gonderit excused
herself to straighten up her desk and lock her drawers while Tesfagiorgis and
the official had tea. When she didn’t
return and couldn’t be found anywhere in the kebele office, the irate officer
and Tesfagiorgis began to search the kebele compound. Here’s the rest of the story in
Tesfagiorgis’s own words:

At the back of the building, there was a big metal structure
supporting a water tank.  At the foot of the metal structure I saw a pair of
female shoes and I knew he saw them too.  But the security officer immediately
turned his face in the opposite direction and continued shouting “Where is
she?”  It was logical to suspect that she could have climbed the metal structure,
which was very close to the stone fence of the compound, jumped over and
escaped.  I wondered if the security officer might himself be a member or a
sympathizer of EPRP.  I was shocked and
confused. 

Then all of us kebele workers got together in a room and talked
about what had happened until around 6 that afternoon, but we didn’t get
anywhere.  The security officer warned us to conduct our own investigation into Gonderit’s
disappearance and submit our findings to the Ministry of Interior security unit
the next morning, along with our passport size pictures.  My kebele colleagues
and I continued to talk until about 3 a.m., wearing ourselves out and getting
nowhere.  Finally, we compiled our report and attached our pictures and
submitted them to the security unit.  We were told we’d be called later and that
we’d suffer the consequences for Gonderit’s escape.  Fortunately, this never
happened. I later learned that Gonderit
had broken her leg jumping over the
fence and was forced to take refuge in a relative’s house not very far from the
kebele. Arrangements were made for her
escape, but, I’m sorry to say, Gonderit was caught, tortured and executed.  She
was a very nice and strong lady that I and all my kebele colleagues cannot
forget. 

WITNESSING A HORRIFYING
TORTURE SESSIONAnother story that Tesfagiorgis
told as we shot the video clip in my hotel room had to do with an invitation to
his kebele from a neighboring kebele to participate in the interrogation of
some suspected EPRP supporters. Because
Tesfagiorgis’s kebele was suspected of disloyalty, the invitation to
participate couldn’t safely be refused, so he and his close friend and reliable
kebele colleague, Gebrehiwot Asfaw, along with some other kebele colleagues
went to the neighboring kebele late one evening. What Tesfagiorgis witnessed that evening left
him shaken and fearful, knowing that he could all too easily become a victim
himself. Watching two or three of the
suspects being suspended between two tables and having the soles of their bare
feet viciously beaten with sticks and cables was horrifying enough. But he couldn’t have imagined what would happen
next. One young prisoner from Tesfagiorgis’s
kebele was told to take off his jacket and shirt and lie down on a table, to
which his hands and feet were tied. One
of the guards then put gasoline-soaked papers on the young man’s bare chest and
set them afire. Crying and begging for
mercy, the young man soon lost consciousness, was untied and thrown on the
floor. As Tesfagiorgis observed, “I
started to seriously think about myself and knew something worse was hovering
over my head.” 

SURVIVING TWO YEARS
IN PRISON

Things grew ever more dangerous and
nerve wracking for Tesfagiorgis, who as chairman of his kebele was forced to
participate in door to door searches for EPRP supporters. “Arrests and killings were widespread,”
according to Tesfagiorgis, “and survival was a daily worry of the young and
their parents and relatives. Seeing
bodies of people killed and thrown in the streets became more and more
common. In those days, smoking a lot,
drinking a lot and sleeplessness were daily routines. If you asked the people why they were doing
that they would jokingly tell you that they were not willing to give away their
healthy lungs and livers to the Derg. ”Tesfagiorgis’s exhausting and frightening double life came to an end
when he was arrested early in 1978.After
being interrogated and forced to make a videoed public confession on a stage at
the Central Personnel Agency, Tesfagiorgis served two years in prison. One of his most horrifying memories from his
two years in prison was when at 4 a.m. one day, 12 of his fellow inmates,
including two newly made friends, were taken – hands tied – out of the cell and
executed, their bodies thrown in the street and left there for a half day for
the public to see.  Tesfagiorgis later found out from a former official now imprisoned with him
that “whenever he saw me I reminded him of a miracle, and the miracle was my
survival. He told me that I survived
that bloody night by one single vote in my favor. I could have been the 13th person
to be executed. That made things fresh
in my mind and made me sleepless again for some days. I never knew who voted for and against my
life.” 

A HAPPY ENDINGTesfagiorgis’s
dark days came to an end. He
suffered terribly, but he is keenly aware how fortunate he was to have
survived when hundreds of thousands did not. He is grateful to have been able to return to the Central Personnel
Agency (which became the Civil Service Commission), where he spent his whole
career, and he feels blessed to be happily married and the father of two
wonderful young people. 

1 comment:

We, young Ethiopians, are always grateful for what people like Tesfagiorgis did so the next generation live in peace and harmony.  And also thank you Mr. Doug Eadie for presenting the story in a kind and professional way! 

JACQUELINE

Based on a true story, "Jacqueline" is a tale of family, faith, unusual friendships, and the resiliency of the human spirit set against the backdrop of occupied Rennes in 1944.  With the drama of fiction and the authenticity of personal history, "Jacqueline" is both a story about family and a family's story. 

PROJECT JUNE BUG

Take an intimate peek behind the faculty room door and an unforgettable journey into the world of ADHD

About Me

I'm currently a columnist for The Island Reporter, a publication serving the South Gulf Beaches in St. Petersburg, Florida.  My Florida Authors series features articles based on exclusive interviews with some of the state’s best writers.  My “Pride & Joy” column
profiles individuals who give back to their communities through volunteerism. 
I'm also the author of two novels. "Project June Bug" is the story of a young teacher’s efforts to help a student with ADHD.  It has received 12 awards, including Premier Book Awards “2009 Book of the Year.”  My latest novel, "Jacqueline,"(published by Anaiah Press) is a middle grade historical based on an experience my dad, a WWII veteran, had while stationed in France shortly after D-day.  Four of my stories have appeared in "Chicken Soup for the Soul" editions. 
I live on Treasure Island (yes, it's as beautiful as it sounds), with my husband and two rather noisy macaws.  In my spare time, I enjoy reading, walking on the beach, and visiting family in New Jersey, where I'm the proud "Grammy" of six beautiful grandchildren (with the pictures to prove it!)