The Peace Corps Effect

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Books that bred [and explain] the Peace Corps
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“An Unexpected Love Story — The Women of Bati”
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David Jaroch (Ghana) in Ubly, Michigan — “I’m something of a professional student.”

Books that bred [and explain] the Peace Corps

By John Coyne (Ethiopia 1962-64) • During the 1950s, two social and political impulses swept across the United States. One impulse that characterized the decade was detailed in two best-selling books of the times, the 1955 novel by Sloan Wilson, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, and the non-fiction The Organization Man, written by William H. Whyte and published in 1956. These books looked at the “American way of life” and how men got ahead on the job and in society. Both are bleak looks at the mores of the corporate world. These books were underscored by Ayn Rand’s philosophy as articulated in such novels as Atlas Shrugged, published in 1957. Every man, philosophized Rand, was an end in himself. He must work for rational self-interest, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself.   Then in 1958 came a second impulse first expressed in the novel . . .

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“An Unexpected Love Story — The Women of Bati”

 by John Coyne (Ethiopia 1962-64)   If the reader prefers, this may be regarded as fiction. But there is always the chance that such a piece of fiction may throw some light on what has been written as fact. — Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast • AT AN ELEVATION OF 4,000 FEET,  the town of Bati, Ethiopia, off the Dessie Road, is the last highland location before the Danakil Depression. A hard day’s drive from the Red Sea, it’s famous only for its Monday market days when the Afar women of the Danakil walk up the “Great Escarpment” to trade with the Oromos on the plateau. These women arrive late on Sunday, and with their camels and tents, they cover the grassy knob above the town. They trade early in the next morning for grain, cloth, livestock, and tinsels and trinkets imported from Addis Ababa, 277 kilometers to the south. Numbering as . . .

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David Jaroch (Ghana) in Ubly, Michigan — “I’m something of a professional student.”

  By Connor Veenstra, staff writer, Huron Daily Tribune March 18, 2022 • UBLY, MICHIGAN: David Jaroch of Ubly describes himself as “a spent in the village, he learned valuable lessons in poverty, since he was paid very little; how to experience other cultures, since each tribe had their own; and it sharpened his problem solving skills, which he would carry the rest of his life. “When you go to a city where nobody speaks English and you’re hungry, you’ve got to figure it out,” he said. After returning to the Thumb and settling in Ubly, Jaroch and his wife, also a teacher, began a teaching career that led them to schools in Port Huron, Parisville, Port Hope, and Ubly. Jaroch taught every subject as a problem-solving exercise, even subjects like English, which at first glance have no problems to solve. “If there’s a message you’ve got to get across, how do you . . .

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