NEARLY four decades after fleeing political turmoil in search of a better life, Swan Hill businessman Sebastian Parseghian has made an emotional journey back to his birthplace in Ethiopia.
After winning the Toyota President’s Award for Excellence, for which this year’s ceremony was held in Zanzibar and Kenya, Sebastian travelled to Ethiopia to retrace his boyhood footsteps alongside wife Rebecca.
Although anxious about returning to a place he and his family fled due to political turmoil and unrest, Sebastian embraced the time he spent there with his wife.
“It was in the top five best things I have done in my life, except getting married and having a son,” he said.
“I was a little scared because I have an Australian passport but it says I was born in Addis Ababa.
“Because of all the turmoil and political problems at the time I lived there, in my mind I had an old fear.”
Even though Sebastian no longer has any family in Ethiopia, he visited many of the places that were close to his heart, such as the schools he used to go to and the Armenian church he and his family frequented.
“We tracked down a guy that used to work for my dad… we went to his shop and he had all of my dad’s old furniture in it that he had once given to him,” Sebastian said.
For more on this story pick up a copy of Wednesdays Guardian (August 24, 2016)
