3rd July 2000
Dear All
I have been considering all sorts of imaginative ways to write this newsletter but have
so much news I am hesitant to waste space with layout or too many paragraphs. It is
impossible to write down everything we are doing but we want to thank you for your support
and let you know we are very aware of your support in many ways. Life here is full of good
news and the bad news jokes! Read on.
ENVIRONMENTALLY: The weather here is hotting up. The locals continually
tell us it is not HOT yet! Most days we are in the 30 degrees but the relentless Baku wind
makes the situation tolerable. The trees are in full leaf giving welcome shade and while
out walking we take to the shady side of the road. The summer fruits are bountiful and
very cheap, we are eating an abundance of fresh melons, cherries, apricots, peaches and
currants. The watermelons are a constant worry as the levels of pestisides are highest in
these, we are being careful, prayer and grace before eating are a necessity of life here.
The beaches are being used now by the locals and we have enjoyed a few swims in the
Caspian already. 11,000 seals were found dead in the Caspian last week.....the locals said
it was the warm climate.......the world said it was an ecological disaster!!......we are
careful where we swim and also pray!
DENTALLY: Our flip charts, all 2000, are printed and stored in our
entrance way. They look great and we are thrilled with the price and quality of print. We
held our first dental education training session in Barda last week and have our 2nd
and 3rd this week. We presented our seminar to 34 trainers from the outlying
areas and refugee camps in the Barda region who work under OXFAM. A large number for our
first training was not ideal. Our translator, Zaur, froze in front of so many
people and sorely tested our patience, we pray he will be better this week! The message
was received with enthusiasm and the participants enjoyed our variety of presentation and
interaction. Briefly we introduce the message with Ian reading and talking through the
flip chart facts, then we have a puppet play on how to clean your teeth (Click here to see the puppets). They make cut out
models of a mouth and toothbrush to use for demonstrations in the field, then we have
another puppet play on diet. They make a poster on good and bad foods, then we play a team
quiz game as revision and fun at the end. It all takes 3 hours of hard work but it is
great to see how much they learn, we do a pre and post test to check we are doing our job!
We have met two South American girls who have these terrific puppets and had plays written
in Azeri about Dental hygiene and diet!! They are enjoying the work and keen to carry on
the message when we leave in December. We have at least 12 organisations to give training
to before the end of November, so sometimes wonder how we can fit it all in. We travel
long distances to take these sessions so appreciate continued prayer for travel safety and
stomach settledness. ( we are reliant on local catering when away on these ventures!)
Barda Clinic continues with Akif treating a record 15 patients in one day! He is
resistant to change and new ways so we are basically putting our energy into the education
training at the moment and just overseeing him. There is no news of the Mobile Dental Unit
arriving from London yet, though we are planning on taking on Akif’s brother and
upskilling his dentistry to work on the Mobile. We are amazingly grateful for the supplies
people have donated from New Zealand and Australia, a total of over $7000USD!, these will
keep the clinic running costs down for the rest of the year. Colgate Azerbaijan has also
been very generous and is donating a tube of toothpaste for every toothbrush we buy, at
wholesale price.
INTER PERSONALLY: We continue to worship at the Baku International
Fellowship and enjoyed introducing them to our style of family worship. Many of the women
and children have gone home for the summer, also about 10 families; thus the reason we
have Klause! (the Smith family cat!) Klause has fallen from our 3rd floor
balcony twice now so is rapidly using up his 10 lives, he has aggravated Murdoch’s
eczema but also given us alot of laughs, we will miss him in September.
We continue to enjoy a wonderful variety of friends, we were especially priveleged to
attend our language tutors sons 1st birthday party and our Australian friends
sons 18th. We also farewelled Matine and Gamar our Azeri dentist family to USA,
Dave and Bonnie to USA, and Jeff Galt has come and almost gone again from NZ. We now have
several Azeri friends who pop in for a cup of tea and we enjoy this, we are thankful their
English is better than our Azeri! The NZ contingent here regularly get together and for
some functions we have even become honourary Americans celebrating the 4th of
July in fine red, white and blue style! Claudia and Leckia our puppeters are also becoming
close team mates with us, they are native Spanish speakers so we have lots of fun.
EDUCATIONALLY: The hard slog of correspondence on their own has settled
in. The children received their first reports from the Correspondence School and need to
continue steadily to finish the year, assuming the mail gets through?! We are proud of
their efforts and understand why they have finished their favourite subjects and still
have books of others left to do. Unfortunately we have had some postings not arrive, both
ways, this is costly and frustrating for all of us. Who would think we would miss NZ Post?
Thomas continues to learn heaps in the demining training programme and has been away most
weeks coming home at the weekends. He has a fortnight off to go to Georgia and Barda with
us and then the future is unknown. He has learned more Azeri there and enjoys his comrades
down there, even dancing at a local Azeri wedding. The living conditions have been spartan
and very hot, 40’s, the food was so bad they have been cooking for themselves after
the kitchen cooks go home! Ian and I continue to learn Azeri with limited success.
Azeribaijani language, in Latin script is from 1994, before that it was in cyrillic script
or Russian. We are learning Latin script but none of the signs, newspapers, etc are in
Latin as only the children read it! Spoken is the same but the problem is confusing,
Russian is more spoken in Baku but in Barda no Russian is spoken; there doesn’t seem
a simple solution.
PERSONALLY: I think I have said this before but for us personally the
days and weeks seem very busy and full, but the months are slowly ticking by.
Ian is feeling considerable pressure from all there is to get done and the time
restrictions of the education project. His health is much better now we are cooking for
ourselves in Barda, but he has many stomach upsets with changes of food. He came here to
train dentists and instead is teaching dental prevention, so it is taking a bit of mind
set change to understand the new job description. Many of the reasons for the changes are
difficult and we both need prayer not to let resentment and bitterness creep in but to get
on and do the new task set before us. Ian will miss Dave from World Hope, his office and
support have been invaluable as our office and personnel are not equipped or accessible
for the task. He is taking Thomas and Morag to Georgia 10-17th July so please
pray for the whole trip, it is a 19 hour train journey to begin with!
Suzanne is enjoying a break from teaching at school but loving the training
seminars. I have visited some orphanages here and plan to visit one regularly when I
decide which one to go to. The conditions are very bad and the children very needy of
touch and stimulation, I am going to a handicap children’s one next week to see if I
can handle that before making a weekly commitment. I continue to enjoy our hospitality and
am finally mistress of our gas oven, almost! The teaching program I teach in the Azeri
school under has given us some interesting connections with the American Ambassador,
hobknobbing with all sorts!
THOMAS, MURDOCH AND MORAG:
The heat is making everything hard work here and
we are thankful of the loaned VCR for the summer months. Thomas is now 18 and Murdoch 16!
Morag is already spending her birthday money in anticipation of August. The children are
more settled here and the regular support on E Mail from NZ friends is a life line we are
really grateful for. Thanks to you guys who write so regularly!!!
RECREATIONALLY: We have managed a couple of tourist type trips recently,
the highlight being to Chorak Castle above the little town of Gala Alti. It was built
about 12th century and was a watch tower for invaders. Now it is just crumbling
ruins but quite spectacular in position and imagining the labour to build it. We climbed
up to it, taking about 2 hours in the heat of the day, and found others there who had
driven around the back and walked 10 minutes. Still walking keeps up a little fitness. The
views were spectacular. View More Photos of
Chorak Castle
ALMOST FINALLY: Space is running out. We are finding things here settling
to a routine and coming to terms slowly with the company dynamics. The distance from NZ
seems long sometimes despite the E Mail.
We felt miles away as our housegroup shared the anniversary of our dear friend
Martin’s death. We grieved for the loss of Margaret Hawke too, unable to share in the
Main Street Dental grief together. Hamish has had untold pain with his wrist and Latch has
been severely depressed!! But moaning and dwelling on these is not necessary as we can
almost see January 2001!
FINALLY: Like most things this had to come to an end. Thankyou to
everyone who supports us in prayer, thought or financially.
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