European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - June 22, 1985, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Little change after 19 years without Gold Many Pracale residents would jobs Are Kev shiny a peace corps town a photo by David Brisoe associated press the Road to Pracale jars the mind and numbs the despite unending construction the last stretch of a seven hour bus ride from Manila Hast improved much in two break dancing and but Amaxis have come to the Little coastal but the Pace and Quality of life have changed Little in the 19 years since a peace corps Volunteer was first assigned to teach English at the towns High that was in the same year Ferdinand Marcos was first sworn in As president of the viewed from atop a bouncing sack of the verdant philippine Countryside is a series of familiar images a water Buffalo shimmering from a mud a child running from the grinding gears of the overburdened an old Man lounging on a Flat Board worn shiny with years of Road dust mixes in the lungs with the stinging smoke of drying copra and the perfume of Many Over dressed and  for such a primitive As the Philippines goes through the social tur Moil following the 1983 assassination of opposition Leader Binigno the town of people has never had an antigovernment South Pacific allure although Pracale helped vote in opposition Assem Blyman Roy Padila in last Mays some Resi dents say Marcos could still carry the town in 1987 if he has Good local people in Manila Are while Here in the provinces they Are contented with what they with what said Parish priest Efren Sanchez who described Paradales largely roman Catholic population As devout but often too Busy trying to find food to worry about nationwide 60 percent inflation last year hit every but in Pracale the Impact is lessened because people have Long been too poor to buy anything they dont need to most people in Pracale have a piece of said former mayor Lope de if i run out of i go to my collect coconuts and sell them by the in 1966 a gasoline powered Generator provided Only overnight electrical Power for the town the Plant also produced Block ice to keep the fishermen daily catch fresh for the Long trip to 24hour electricity comes Over High wires from a Distant geothermal Generator and dual strands carry Power into surrounding but Many residents keep appliances and lights off to avoid the High electric new businesses include a combination hard Ware store ice Cream and one fish dealer has expanded into videotape rentals for the towns growing video movie a chalkboard marquee advertises revenge of the ninja for the equivalent of about 5 cents a head at 7 in somebody living the video recorder and color television set brought by a son working on a Middle East construction Are Likely Worth More than everything else in the House com but in Pracale even the Rich live and Only those who Long ago left town have changed their lifestyle in the last two one of the towns biggest former Provin Cial vice Serafin Cribe lives in a Bamboo and Wood hut on a nearby collecting the equivalent of 10 cents from few people in Pracale have Only one source of in they either have a store set up on the front a son or daughter sending Money from a Job in Middle or they pan for if there were no Gold panning the people would said Roberto de whose Little private Hospital has Only 45percent he charges the equivalent of 25 to 50 cents for an office Call and says people who cant afford even that often pay with a Chicken or a bag of the communist apparently growing else has barely touched the Roberto who commands the 22mem Ber police says the last violent encounter with rebels was in december 1983 when he shot and killed an alleged communist commander trying to escape after he was caught putting up subversive posters along the Road into now the most frequent problems Are Petty drunk enness and an occasional report of drug use at the High there was no indication of drugs at Pracale High school two decades and principal Glicerio de be Mios said there is none he said three youths recently arrested with marijuana were not among the schools 943 at the 39th annual Pracale High school held on an april afternoon in the town Only the dance style and the music had changed from a similar graduation in the 174 graduates from the class of All 15 or 16 years sat in formal White and Black As three youths demonstrated break dancing on the hard Concrete the class Rhodora san who lives in a tiny wooden hut next door to the urged graduates to develop discipline As a Way of the student printed Only once a year because of limited listed goals for the graduating Albert Rubio and Raul de Jesus both want to be president of the several aim at careers in ism computer programming and two Hope to be hol Lywood none wants to be a a Fisher Man or a which Are the main jobs available to people in of the remembered 1967 Only a handful have stayed in Shirley de lemnos now teaches under her Conrado Yebras runs a Little store on Candelaria Jess Dar is a radio announcer i nearby several have gone Nancy Factor is working in and class valedictorian Tony Imperio is an Engi Neer in the Navy in a Gold mining Boom town in the once had three cinemas and several foreign after a Cavern that killed 56 miners old timers still remember the horror As the River Bottom gave flooding the mine the towns fortunes the foreigners and the miners left and the town turned to farming and Gold but residents still live with the Hope the mines will returning the town to its former glory and no Telephone or Telegraph connects the town with the outside news comes in by fuzzy television often delayed newspapers or from passengers on the private cars Are rarely seen along the narrow nearly everybody walks to to to to visit relatives or to Post a nothing in town is More than a few Steps two decades ago and the wind from the sea blows away any traces of after 9 the Street leading from the rain streaked Church in the Plaza to the Silvery sea is except for Low voices and the occasional slap of rubber slippers on the clean peace corps volunteers who stayed behind by Charles Hanley associated press As a Straw haired schoolgirl Back Home in Marialice Burford had a i was going to be a Chicago cubs sports writer she then she found her South sea and my dreams All went there was a heaven beyond Wrigley Field after for a generation the ageless allure of the Pacific the jewel like the Lush Little the Lan laughing people has been luring peace corps volunteers like Marialice Burford into sinking new roots in Remote old dozens of volunteers have stayed behind after their Tours of duty becoming part of Island operating businesses and practising keeping taverns and advising studying anthropology and writ ing some liken themselves to old those 19thcentury adventurers who counselled Island chiefs on the ways of the outside 394 peace corps volunteers Are assigned to the Pacific 94 of them in Micronesia the Marshall islands and other places in a administered territory Miles from the american they work on agricultural As teach As advisers to no one knows just How Many of their predecessors have settled in the but on Majuro a slender ring of Palm fringed islets that is the capital of the Marshall extols turn up one runs the Cocon toil another manages the big a third owns a handful of Small business but none has plunged More deeply into atoll life than Jerry a chicagoan who arrived As a Volunteer in Knight later decided to stay on and get inside the he worked As a Majuro Fisherman for two perfecting his knowledge of the musical marshallese Lan then he cast off into the unknown sailing 400 Miles up to isolated Rong Lap where he lived for four years among the 150 an Ocean away from Western in his Lagoon the self taught anthropologist took Down the Oral histories told by a traditional Island he later published a Book of the i was planning to stay there till i said the moustached but he finally was recalled to Majuro for overstaying his visa in the later he reestablished himself in and As curator of the local museum continues recording marshallese tales and Down the Majuro a Volunteer Ralph Waltz has plunged into Community on behalf of a historically special Community the people of Bikini the former College linebacker from Menomonee arrived in the marshalls 18 years ago to work As a peace corps teacher on Kili exile Home for peo ple evacuated from Bikini in 1946 for atomic weapons the assignment changed his after his two year he married a settled Down on impoverished harvested Coconut and began Lon distance lobbying of the govern ment to get radioactive Bikini decontaminated so that its people could return before coming out i want aware of How my government had taken advantage of these said the Burly his fight he and his slim live in Majuro with two of their two older children Are at a High the transplanted americans say they miss the excite ment of big Good bookstores and hardware i miss Mcdonalds hamburgers and French Marialice Nee said with a a 29yearold University of Missouri journalism Grad the onetime aspirant to the baseball press Box now works for the Pohnpei and she and her Pohn Pecan husband have opened a liquor she laughed at How she has adapted in the eight years since she arrived As a i remember being amazed at All these naked kids waving at us in the she now its my two kids who Are running around whatever yearnings they have for old these a volunteers Are hooked on islands and Island put said its people that Are import and i liked the people there Hon Estten Solive to each others 42yearold Waltz does plan to move on someday Ijmte farther out Over the to Distant if made habitable he made a Brief visit there on and the vision wont leave this Island lovers Lagoon full of fantastic he e most Beautiful Island Ive Ever j it n 14 the stars and stripes new York times photo Indian newlyweds show off their without a a Bride can dowry violence threatens India brides by James Miles United press International Rani Kapoor tried hard to make her marriage but she could not give her inlays the automobile they her husband and Mother inlaw doused her with kerosene and tried to Burn her to death in new was married in May 1984 after graduating from Delhi like Many City her parents found her husband through a newspaper she brought nearly nine ounces of a television a videocassette recorder and various furniture and kitchenware in gifts As dowry is euphemistically termed for her affluent but it was not her 28yearold businessman she told an anti dowry women wanted the latest Indian status Symbol a Suzuki Maruti Ranis Mother inlaw told her son not to sleep with Rani until his demands were she thought a child might weaken his the dowry conflict escalated into screaming quarrels until the Day Rani suddenly found herself drenched with unlike Many Browbeaten Rani struggled and frightened the neighbors would her husband locked her into her forgetting the room had a she was Able to Call her brother for not her real Only barely avoided being added to the list of 340 dowry deaths reported in India in some experts claim Many More such deaths went the problem of dowry related violence has become so acute that new Delhi police have set up a special 30 member dowry a disproportionately High number of Young women were said Kanwarjit the unit chief and one of its three women and we Felt these cases were not getting i depth the newspapers carry reports of dowry deaths Al most every despite a Law passed More than 20 years ago making it illegal for the bridegrooms family to demand most brides Are still expected to give the Hus bands family often including a a a refrigerator and in marriages Are usually arranged by the Cou Ples and the Young Bride lives with her Hus bands one of the main causes of dowry Deol is that people regard their sons marriage As an Opportunity to raise their Standard of june someone who always Ridden a bicycle thinks he can get a she wives whose husbands hold jobs such As Auto Rickshaw watchmen and Cooks Are most Likely to be harassed for expensive Deol but the problem occurs even in Wel Todo although known in the where death by drowning in a Well is More Rural people Are generally too poor for massive dowries to become an that makes dowry violence essentially an Urban Bride burning is particularly acute in Northern the Southern states have always been protected from whenever there is an a woman is regarded merely As valuable property to be theorized former member of parliament and anti dowry campaigner Pramila on a general she the dowry problem reflects the status of women in our society is a Feudal minded Dand Avate the woman is a secondary dowry has reduced the existence of women to a lesser status than a if someones cow Dies he has to spend More Money to get another but if his wife his new Bride comes with More women have very Little Chance of supporting them selves independently in and divorce is frowned said Suman Krishna head of the women Vig Ilance an anti dowry the Domestic conflict Over dowry in the cramped quarters of a typical Indian Home leads to unreasoning fury and but rarely to she Ranis Case is her parents advised a but it was not until the attempted burning that Rani gave up trying to save the More often the harassed brides own parents pressure her to suffer her inlays abuse in she the abused Bride feels she has come to the end of her Kant she is virtually prepared to her Mother inlaw and husband Burn her in the Kitch Bride burning is usually made to appear a Kitchen Accident or suicide and the police Are easily Kant the stars and stripes Page 15