N.Z. NURSE IN KOREA

Press, Volume C, Issue 29424, 28 January 1961, Page 2

N.Z. NURSE IN KOREA

New Vehicle Big Help In Work

A letter received by the Save the Children Fund from Miss Elsie Leipst, a New Zealand nurse who went to Korea last year, says that her great joy at present is her new utility vehicle.

“Three can sit comfortably in the front and there are four seats in the back.” she writes. "These I convert into a small clinic room and do many treatments in the villages I visit. Often on our morning runs tve pick up five or six mothers trudging up through the mountain cutting to the afternoon clinic, and to see the look of gratitude on their faces is reward enough. "I am well established in my work now and find that I cannot fit enough into my day. It is just amazing how much one gets around from village to village, and I am looked on now more as a friend than a foreign nurse How grateful they are for all the heln they can get. but how little it is compared with what we have in our own country.

“The colder days are beginning to settle in, and I am dreading the winter months, not for my own discomfort but for the tragedies I know it will produce. There is no electricity, and people use candles —you can imagine what this means where there are hundreds of dry wooden and straw dwellings.” Self-Built Office Miss Leipst has built herself an office. "I have found my two years at night school doing carpentry most useful,” she writes. "I managed to pull down the now unused pig-sty, and used those boards for flooring. I lined the inside with the plywood from relief goods tea chests, and papered it, first with newspaper to make it smooth, and the bought paper from the market. My interpreter and I have combined to make two small tables With some paint and posters we have quite a presentable office.”