Letter to Joy and Elbert

In a letter dated Sept. 20th.
I just got your excellent letter and am so happy to hear from you. I heard about the hurricane through BBC radio and have been in awe of reports ever since. Heard about the terrible response time to help the needy and am somewhat embarrassed by it. Some people here in Burkina want to send some food to help those folks who were left homeless.

Can you imagine that? This is a country considered one of the poorest in the world and they are still willing to give to others. Its amazing and humbling. There are days I'm very grateful to be here and others I wonder why they want me here, but I'm leaving that all the Fate and we'll see how that pans out.

I'm sorry about Elbert's knee. Tell him next time I'm in town he'll have free slave labor again and to wait for me to arrive. Glad to hear everything else is going well where you are and your family. Tell Bert and Laura I said "hi" and am patiently awaiting their care package. I very much appreciate everything sent my way even if its a post-it note.

It seems letters are taking about 2-3 weeks to arrive and packages at least 4 weeks. We'll see if all arrive safely. (I Hope!) Just finished seeing my new site and boy it will be a lot of work - but in a good way. It looks like I'll be doing polio vaccinations, teaching prevention of AIDS, and daily clerical work @ the local clinic to help facilitate case loads of the health practioners There will be other projects but I'm planning on doing an area demographic study to find out needs of the community. WISH ME LUCK. I'm still in training for the next month until Oct. 21st, and then I head to my village. It's name is To and is quite large for my type of assignment. The lst three months at our site we're not supposed to leave, so I'll hopefully integrate well into the community and start making friends or I'll start sending even more desperate for mail than I've already been.
Love to All