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Title: Food Soldier
Author: Howard L. Steele, Ph.D.
ISBN: 1928928013
Description:
Take one Pennsylvania-born, university-trained development economist, mix with the people, problems and opportunities of 43 countries, stir in a variety of U.S. government programs, and you can learn a lot.
Howard Steele certainly did, and survived gun-toting Bolivian revolutionaries, Viet Cong mortar and rifle fire, deadly anarchy in Sri Lanka, a shake-down by Tanzanian police, Taiwanese cockroaches the size of kittens and sheep's eye stew in Saudi Arabia. Marriage survival was more difficult. As he advanced from mid-level technician to senior rank U.S. representative, at times Howard had to battle his own government, or learn to navigate its bureaucratic idiosyncrasies, just as he did with dozens of overseas regimes and their national cultures. It helped that he spoke Portuguese and Spanish, even if much of the language training was on-the-job immersion.
From Brazil, just after its 1964 revolution, to Switzerland in 1995 - with assignments in Costa Rica, Iran, and Nepal, among numerous others along the way - Steele leads the reader through many of the 43 countries he served in on six continents in a 34-year career. He tells it as it happened, no partisan spin, all authentic, on-the-scene detail. Poverty and prosperity, fear and fun, stupid mistakes, corrupt host governments, incompetent Americans, language and cultural glitches...and some developmental successes, are all here.
- Try ordering "a plate of beer" in Portuguese sometime, or keeping your supper down when told you're dining on "crap" with a university president in Taiwan!
- Hold your head high while Vietnamese "ladies of the night" get their revenge after your research team commandeers their hotel rooms.
- Learn why it's a bad idea to drive your car over elephant "scat" in Sri Lanka. Follow Steele's evaluations of development successes and failures in countries with emerging economies.
- Listen in on his conversations with host country colleagues about liberty and freedom, social consciousness, paying taxes, and government service.
- Take a behind-the-scenes look at diplomats "saving face," negotiating for their countries' advantage, and politicking within international organizations.
- Learn the difficulties, and rewards, when developing countries, following U.S. expertise, try to abandon mono-cultures and earn needed foreign exchange.
Steele also discusses participant training and transferring high-level technology to peasant farmers in less-developed countries. He explains how to work successfully with senior colleagues and officials in host countries, dealing simultaneously - as necessary - with bosses from D.C. who've dropped in to see things for themselves while still wearing "inside the Beltway" filters. Laugh, or cry, as the author, himself a knowledgeable pilot, takes you through the pain of international air travel and the decay of once-renowned airlines.
Food Soldier is both light-hearted and informative. It's great reading for travel buffs, former government staffers who've "been there." It provides insight and perspective for students of international development, and for public or private sector employees about to live overseas.
