SUBJECT: Adjusting to jungle life

AUTHOR: Betsy Burgdorff, her husband Ted, and three girls - Heidi, Kristen, and Kara, work with her sister Becky Gates and family in Guyana.

DATE: November 26, 1996

Hi to all of you! We have been in Kaikan over a week now. The plane comes again tomorrow, so we'll try mailing again, and hope you get this. I really miss e-mail!!!

I had planned to keep a diary while I was here, but we seem to be so busy most of the time, and I never seem to write. We finally started writing little notes on the calendar, and that's probably as much of a diary as I'll ever write. Maybe you can keep copies of my letters, since there's not time to write both a letter and a diary.

I will give an update since my last letter, which covered our arrival in Kaikan. (David should have mailed it from the States.) On Monday, the 18th, the kids started to school. We talked to the teacher, and she said they could come when they wanted or stay home when they wanted. We didn't enroll them officially, because then they would keep attendance, and have to do all their work, etc. We

Lina Teaching Class

don't have uniforms for them yet. They've been going part time. Kristen and Katrina usually go in the afternoons, and do some school in the mornings at home. Heidi usually takes her own books to work in, and Lina has been helping the teacher, teaching some classes. Heidi is too shy and doesn't want to do that. They only have school up to age 14 here. I don't know what grade, because it is the British system. It's hard right now because most of their books are still in Georgetown, and I don't know when we will get them. The school is doing testing this week, so the kids all decided to stay home this week. Kara likes school, because she can go to school barefoot! Some of the kids wear shoes, but many go to school barefoot. What she doesn't like is that they all stare at her.

Fetching Water Together is Easier

I told her that in a week or so she wouldn't be such a novelty anymore and they'd quit staring. Maybe when the rest of the books come, we can get on a better schedule.

We have a nice stream that comes from the spring, that runs quite near the house. That's where we get our water, for drinking, washing clothes, etc. It's cleaner than the river, and we feel fortunate that it is so close to the house.

We walk about 3 or 4 minutes down the trail to where a boat takes us directly across the river to the little store. There are no stores in Kaikan itself, that I am aware of. Everything is across the river in Venezuela. A helicopter flies in, sometimes once or twice a day, bringing in supplies. There is no village across the river, just the 2 or 3 little stores right across the river. So far we have only been to the one store closest to our house. We can get the basics there: Rice, oatmeal, flour, sugar, oil, soap, toilet paper, matches, hot chocolate powder (labelled TACO, I thought it was hot sauce!), canned sardines (for the pets, which we mix with rice), tomato paste, catsup, spaghetti, and one kind of noodles, beans, split peas, crackers, cookies, candy, and sodas. They occasionally have bread or some produce, like eggplant, cabbage, or carrots, but most of the time they don't, it seems. They also have eggs, onions, and garlic. What we miss the most is bread, fruits and vegetables. Fortunately the church members here have been so kind, and almost every day someone brings us something: bananas, papayas, pineapple, oranges, yucca (called casava here), white yams, sweet potatoes, and a root called edo. That pretty much sums up our diet!

Becky is the chief cook, and we manage to come up with some pretty good meals. It is a new experience for my girls to have to ration food, however. With 10

Becky, The Cook

people, we have to divide things up and make sure everyone gets their portion. Kristen must be growing, because she is constantly hungry! Without bread to fill up on after a meal, it has been difficult. I think we have solved our bread problem, though. Wendy, one of our neighbors and a church member, said we could watch her bake bread, then use her oven. The people here make ovens out of barrels. They put them on their side, smash the top in a little, then build one fire on top and one underneath. Inside they place some green branches as a rack to hold the pans. They use a kerosene can cut in half lengthwise for breadpans. (I am amazed at the creativity of people who can't just run to the store to buy everything they need!) Wendy's bread was baked to perfection, beautiful! Then she made some for us. The kids were delighted that evening to have bread for supper. We told Wendy we would pay her to bake bread for us until we could get our own oven made.

The church members have been coming every day to work on the house, and it is progressing rapidly. We had heard that it was all done except for the roof, but the opposite was true. Only the roof was done, no walls or floors. It is bigger than this house by quite a bit. It is 30 X 18 (this one is 21 X 16) and they have enclosed 2/3 of the downstairs to make a kitchen. It is very nice! We plan to share the kitchen area downstairs and eat together. They are making a nice big table for us. The kitchen now has a nice counter and some cabinets. It's amazing how fast a house can be built when you don't have any plumbing or electricity, insulation, dry wall, carpeting, etc. It's just a matter of nailing up boards. The thing that takes the longest is preparing the boards. You can't just find a Home Club to buy ready-made lumber. They first find a tree in the jungle, cut it down, then hand cut all the planks with a chainsaw. Then they carry them to the house, measure them, and start cutting them to size with their machetes; then they plane them to make them smooth. A lot of work!

We've been looking forward to the day when the house is done, and Gates move in, and we can spread out a little more here. As you can imagine, 10 people in this tiny house gets a bit claustrophobic at times! Then Sabbath we found out some shocking news. Our neighbor was talking with Becky and said, "It's good they're working on the other house, because the new teacher is coming to live in your house." Becky tried not to act too shocked and asked when the teacher was coming. She said, "Maybe in January." Since then we asked Ramo about it. (He's a single young man, an elder-in-training, who has been most helpful and friendly.) He said as far as he knew, it was a rumor, nothing definite. They may get a teacher, or they may not. So we will continue living here until a teacher comes. Ramo said if a teacher came, they would enclose the rest of the downstairs to make the house bigger. We've decided that God will help us through any trial that comes along.

We've seen quite a few patients, and we feel quite inadequate! We didn't come prepared to do medical work, and we brought only a first-aid kit for our family, and the book Where There Is No Doctor, which has been a big help. Our latest patients were the store keeper, his wife, and their 3-year-old son, all sick with fever (104+), chills, vomiting. We suspected malaria, so started them on Chloroquin. We had no idea which medication to use--and we don't even know for sure if it is malaria. The thing is, there seems to be no mosquitos here in Kaikan, which is very nice. In fact, other than roaches and chiggers, there are not a lot of bugs. Ted has our house set up with lights now, but at night there are hardly any bugs swarming around the lights, like I remember in Peru. It's really nice. We don't use our mosquito nets. We've treated 2 snake bites so far and have seen 4 snakes--1 boa, 1 other non-poisonous snakes, and 2 labaria (poisonous).

The plane will be coming soon, so I must finish. I hope you got the letters and film we sent with David.

Love much, Betsy

PS: Ted had the sermon Sabbath, of course. I had a children's story, and we all did special music.

You may write to Betsy at: gates@andrews.edu

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Last Updated: March 10, 1997