First full week of Medical Services

Hello family and friends,

Well, this is the first full 5 day week of dentistry because of all the breaks and holidays they have here. It has been a busy week. Each morning as we arrive at the clinic there are 8-10 people sitting on the bench and grass waiting for us to open, and most of them have been there at least an hour. Usually they are in pain. So Dick is trying to teach the girls in the front to leave 1-1 1/2 hours for emergency (new concept for them) and then have the scheduled procedures after that, and another block of time right after lunch for the same emergency time. These people will sit there all day long waiting to see the dentist. When we break for lunch, they will sit there through the lunch hour and never leave and never be anxious about all the waiting. They are use to it, I guess.

The more patients we see the more Dad feels like the little boy who stuck his finger in the hole in the dam to keep the water from coming, it is overwelming. Every mouth that he looks in has more decay than you would want to see all day. There was a study done here that showed by the age of 6, they have the average of 6 missing or decayed teeth. I really wish we would have taken a picture of the sweet little 3 year old girl, big happy smile, no fear, who jumped up in the dental chair. When she opened her cute little mouth it was all BLACK WITH DECAY. I teared up. How sad. We had a 17 year old in the chair who denied knowing what dental floss was, and when Dick showed her a piece she had no idea what it was for, and her mouth validated that. It is obvious that the most rampant disease on this Island is not diabetes (52% of all people over 50 have diabetes!) but it is dental caries. Dick spends his day doing extractions and trying to do emergency treatment so they can come back for a rootcanal and he tries to save a tooth. It is really a very sad situation.

Soooooooooooooooo, that is why most of our off hours are being spent doing research on public health programs, and Dick is putting together his own program to meet the needs here and will collect the top Government, Medical, Public Services, educators, commnity leaders, etc and present his program to them in such a way that they will see it as THEIR PROGRAM, FOR THEIR PEOPE, AND THEIR ISLAND. When they accept this, he will work with them to get a movie made, contest in the schools to find floss and tooth brushes in nature, and a scheduled program to take the movie into the villages on a bi-annual basis and teach the families about diet, brushing, flossing, bottle-mouth decay, sweets (especially pop), etc. If they can teach the families at the schools, churches, and community centers it will make a huge difference. He thinks it would make a measurable difference within 5 years. He will use his contacts at church headquarters (Tim Taggart, his cousin is in charge of all videos for the church) and approach the BYU programs where we could possibly find a student needing to have a residency or intership in Public Health that would take this on for a few months and get it running. The possibility of it being put in different languages and sent to all the South Pacific Islands (who have the same problem) is good if we get this backing from BYU and the church.

Usually the dentist that come to work at this clinic only stay for a week or two. They probably see the same problems as Dad, but are not here long enough to make a difference. I feel that is why we are here for 5 months, so HE CAN MAKE THE DIFFERENCE THESE PEOPLE NEED. Dad is a good organizer and can get this presented quickly, so hopefully it will be in their hands when we leave and they will keep it going.

They say it is fall and cooling off. We see them wearing sweatshirts with hoods, coats, jackets, they bring in blankets to the clinic because we still have the AC on, and we are still feeling really hot. I guess it all depends on what you are use to. Rain comes in an instant and drops buckets just as fast.

With a church every 2 miles, because over 50% of the people are LDS, Sundays are a joy. All classes at church are open to the outside with loovers that are always open. So when classes meet it is heard all over. These people love to sing as all polynesians do and start and finish every class with a song. So when, RS, YW, YM, Primary, SS, and Priesthood class are going, every class is singing their own song at the same time. The choristers do not try to start everyone at the same time, they just start singing and within the first line there are 4-5 different harmonies that develop. It is beautiful. Today in RS, I am sure that I was the only person singing the written melody (and that made me sound like harmony too, yeh) You do not hear this kind of singing at home.

We think of all of you daily and miss you tons, Dad and Mom