SUBJECT: Family news and health, patients, Snakes!

AUTHOR: Ted Burgdorf, wife Betsy, and three girls - Heidi, Kristen, and Kara, work with the Gates family in Guyana, South America.

DATE: December 7, 1996

Dear Family,

Happy New Years. Finally I can write some e-mail again. I had a letter already composed to send out and then something happened to my laptop and nothing is accessible from the hard drive now. I'm using David's laptop, and he's leaving for Georgetown on the Wednesday plane and then will go on to Trinidad to teach his class. I guess he'll be gone for about a month. We have been very busy here trying to get established. The garden had been quite discouraging, with many seeds not comming up, some come up and just stay small, some get cut off at the stem, and some get the leaves full of holes. We have had the good old stand-by, fast growing radishes, but who can eat many of them. I must add though that I will have some yellow crook neck squash ready to eat next week. I planted everything on Thanksgiving day and am already getting some produce. Fast growing, ideal conditions, except for the bugs, I guess. We also have some tomatoe plants that are growing quite well, but no flowers yet. I planted about 5 diff. types and some are doing OK. Also planted some of the seed from some of the squash we harvested in the garden back in Chowchilla, and the plants are looking real promissing. Also have some watermelon plants growing. I planted some Kentucky pole beans and maybe some will survive the bugs. They have a 1 to 2 ft. long bean that does grow well here, and we should be eating some of them next week also from our garden. We listen to VOA and The Christian Science Monitor news and have heard of all the flooding in Modersto, Marysville and "San Juaquine Valley". Hope it hasn't flooded the drive way. People have been bringing us snakes, mostly dead one's, since they found out that I'm interested in them. Last week they brought at 6 ft. raibow boa, and the week before a 6'8" Fer-de-lance. I skinned the poisenous one with Heidi, and Kristen and Katrina did the boa. This week we started offering health classes on Sunday afternoon, and there has been quite a large turn out. About 20 adults and 15-20 children. We are going to start with basic first aid, and include things such as fractures, snake bites, cpr, nutrition, std's, and a few specific diseases that are common here (Malaria, Hapatitis...). The Captain wants us to teach about medications and how to give injections also. We thought we might as well teach them the right way, since they already give injections, and you can buy injectibles without any Rx. Our solar system is working our really good. We've had only one time that we drained the battery down low, when we were using the inverted and charging up equipment, and then we've been on the radio allot because of several severe illnesses. We have Dr. Lara (8R1AL) at the Davis Memorial Hospital in Georgetown and Dr. Harry (9Y4H) in Trinidad who has been on in the morning and the evening very faithfully. He is a Hindu and we've had some interesting comments and conversations with him. This last week I started and IV on a 16 year old girl who appears to have hepatitis, and had a nose bleed and was vomiting because the blood was running through the back of her throat to her stomach. Oh for some good supplies. We also say a man who had never seen a bottle rocket before and on New Years Eve had it explose in his hand. He split the end of one finger open, and had some penetrating trauma to the palm of his hand. It wasn't untill a few days later that he was soaking it in some hot water that he discovered a piece of cardboard inbedded in his palm. The Lord has been good to provide us with Drs. for assistance and with the knowledge to deal with some of these problems. It is also very helpful to have 4 RN's to bounce ideas around. We all seem to pick up on different important aspects. Mom- We received your package with the story books. Thank you so much. The girls are reading everything they can get their hands on. It was mailed the 11th and we received it 20 days latter. It could have been in Georgetown earlier and gotten to us sooner, but it was the holidays, and no flights came to Kaikan during that time. What I would realy like is if you could sent me some of my books that are up in my office. One is a green paperback book on nutrition. We need some good resource books if we are going to be teaching and treating patients. David is going to check on getting some medical books on CD-Rom for assistance also. We've been looking up in the encyclopedia and other limited resources that we have. Also a book on Carpentry/Construction. They want me to teach them construction here. Look and see what is in my office. Also a book on Horticulture. Another good book would be the book on Angels that I bought at campmeeting this past summer. However I loaned in to someone at work, and they never returned it, so you'll need to get another one. The people here love stories, especially about angels. Please let me know the expenses in purchasing and sending them and I'll make sure your costs are paid back. Thanks. We purchased an LP stove from Venezuela, and yesterday it was flown in by helicopter. We decided that we would be better off spending alittle more money to get some items to help us make daily living easier, so that we could spend more time helping the people here. Up till now we have had to spend most of our time in cooking and washing clothes. It has taken us about 2 hours to prepare each meal. Thats 6 hrs./day. The older girls are washing their own clothes, but the rest of the clothes take 4-5 hrs. two times a week. We have decided to hire someone to help with the washing also to free up some more time. The Captain of the village wants us to help out in the school also, since the teachers are basically graduates from here and don't realy have much training. So we will see how much time we'll have for some of these requested items. We always love to get your letters and hear news from home. We feel quite isolated from the rest of the world, and yet we still manage to stay very busy. Last week we received some of our matresses from Venezuela. We've been sleeping on the floor with our sleeping bags up till now, except for the fact that we have had two single beds that have been loaned to us. One for Becky and David and one for Betsy and me . I prefer the floor, to being scrunched, where I can at least stretch out. I've made 2 bed frames now, so two beds are up off the floor. The house has been at a stand still since before Christmas, when the head builder/hear elder had to take his son to Georgetown because of an open skull fracture. We had to get an airplane diverted to pick him up. He had peralysis to his right arm/hand from the elbow down. He was getting fruit out of a tree by throwing a stick up to knock them down, when the stick got stuck. He went to pick up some fruit already knocked down when the stick came straight down putting all the force of the impact on the point of the stick. Fortunately he is regaining his movement and should be back in Kaikan this week. Every day brings us some never-encourntered-before experience. I must get back to making bed frames now to get the rest up off the floor. Rainy season is upon us and we get some everyday. Hopefully we will get the walls finished on the house to keep the blowing rain out. You can continue sending things to:

Ted Burgdorff (Kaikan)
c/o Anita Devonish
40 Pike Street
Kitty, Georgetown
Guyana, South America

Thanks again for all your prayers and support.

Love,

Ted

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

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Last Updated: March 10, 1997