In the confusion that followed the capture of Magdala, Workneh was separated from his parents and found by the British soldiers alongside Alemayehu Tewodros, weeping over the Emperor's body.
While Dr. Martin was forced to return to his posting in Burma, his effort was not wasted: Harrington subsequently informed Emperor Menelik about the young Ethiopian doctor.
[6] According to Bahru Zewde, basing his opinion on the events Workneh recorded in his yet unpublished diary, Dr. Martin arrived in Ethiopia in late 1899, having his first audience with Emperor Menelik on 5 January 1900.
The doctor, who had long forgotten the few words of Amharic he knew as a child and was forced to rely on an interpreter to talk to his fellow countrymen, sent the man to ask the lady what she wanted.
He viewed the exuberance and excitement of his kin with clinical detachment, expressing scepticism about the identities of his maternal grandmother, Emahoy Salamnesh, his aunt and his half-sister".
Bahru explains much of his response was due to "the culture shock that he must have gone through", and notes that either he must have confined his aloofness to his diary, or it did not bother his relatives who were "earnestly trying to find a bride for him.
Workneh found the year frustrating, for his efforts to open schools in Ethiopia were opposed so fiercely by the Ethiopian Church that no progress was made.
[7] When he found that the raise he had expected did not materialize, to the fury of Empress Taytu Betul, the doctor refused to make his services available any longer and left Addis Ababa on 9 March 1901.
Her father had been reluctant to allow his daughter to marry a foreigner -- "as Workneh was for all intents and purposes presumed to be", Bahru Zewde points out—but he was persuaded in the end to consent to the union.
The Sorbonne educated diplomat, governor and a descendant of the Shoan branch of the dynasty Lij Seifu Mikael married his daughter Sarah Workneh and H.E.
[10] Although he was in charge of building the Addis Ababa - Jimma road until the responsibility was transferred to a group headed by David Hall,[11] Workeneh's primary contributions were in the area of education and government.
[13] He was an important activist for the abolition of slavery in Ethiopia, founding a school for freed slaves that would teach them literacy and other skills which included weaving, tailoring, and carpentry.
In July 1926 Workneh published a moving article in the weekly newspaper Berhanena Selam, in which he argued abolishing slavery "represented the culmination of a course of events initiated by Menilek.
In 1933 he was ordered to release seven persons he had detained on charges of keeping slaves; another instruction he received commanded the immediate transfer of 23,808 birr to the capital, "which was the amount of the revenue of the Ministry of Commerce".
[18] Then in the wake of the Walwal Incident, Workneh was made Ethiopian minister to the United Kingdom, "a post for which he was eminently qualified" Bahru Zewde observes.
Returning to Ethiopia, he dedicated the rest of his life to educating his grandchildren and the children of his relatives and neighbors at his house on the eastern outskirts of Addis Ababa.