Gary Robbins

Family, December 1999

Since leaving Kewanee I went to school in Indianapolis for a year, but then transferred to Augustana and graduated in 1980. During my senior year I spent a quarter abroad in South America which whetted my appetite for living overseas. Immediately after graduation I went off to the Peace Corps in Ghana. I was a volunteer for three years, then spent another year there on short-term contracts with Peace Corps and USAID. I moved to Nairobi, Kenya in September 1984 where I monitored USAID's food aid program in response to the East African drought. I also worked in USAID's Regional Office that took me to such garden spots as Somalia, Ethiopia, Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda and Tanzania.

In August 1987 I moved to Washington to work in USAID's Headquarters. While in Washington I met Kaaren and we were married on a Florida beach in September 1989. I am always surprised she married me as I took her to Sudan for our honeymoon, which is where USAID assigned me for two years starting in May 1990.

We left Sudan in March 1992, came back to Washington for a few months when Sara, our first daughter was born, then headed off for Dhaka, Bangladesh for four and one-half years. During our tour there Becca was born in 1994. Fortunately, USAID will send you back to the States for delivery as both kids were born by emergency C-section. The two events we remember on the days of our daughters' births was that the day Sara was born was the day the episode Murphy Brown gave birth was aired, and on the day Becca was born was the same day OJ had his drive down the L.A. freeway.

From Bangladesh we moved to El Salvador for 18 months from July 1997 to January 1999, when we moved to Sri Lanka, the small island nation off the southern tip of India. I am here as the head of the technical assistance office for the United Sates Agency for International Development (USAID), the foreign assistance arm of the U.S. Government. I manage the part of our program that focuses on three areas, Economic Growth, primarily working to get Sri Lanka more involved in the global marketplace; Democracy, focused on human rights, and Humanitarian Assistance, providing assistance to disadvantaged groups, most of whom have been affected by Sri Lanka's 18 year old ongoing civil war.

My wife, Kaaren Mirk, and two daughters, Sara age eight, and Becca, age six, are here with me as well as our twelve year old German Shepherd, Sojo. We have been in Sri Lanka for a little over two years.

We will probably move back to Washington in 2002, although with USAID one can never tell.

In addition to our regular work, Kaaren and I have been involved in a wide spectrum of volunteer activities from working with charities, serving on boards of various organizations, to organizing community activities. I am currently chairman of the board of directors for our employee recreation association and am on the school board of the international school the kids attend.