Once he had returned from Europe, however, he stayed put. Never interested in a jet-set life, he stopped traveling abroad, saying there was too much to do at home. He was content to trudge through croplands in distant provinces in an open-neck shirt and sport coat, tending to the many development projects he encouraged and oversaw: milk-pasteurizing plants, dams that watered rice fields, factories that recycled sugar-cane stalks and water hyacinths into fuel, and countless others.