A Smile-filled Weekend

On Friday morning, a group of us headed out of Addis to Jimma, about 330km west of Addis (about half way to Sudan) to volunteer with Operation Smile.  Ruth, who attends Beza International Church, is a program coordinator for them and we went to help in whatever way we could.  I left my house at 5 am to begin the adventure.  The last two hours of the journey brought us through a green mountain range.  Hard to sleep through hairpin turns going what felt to be 65 mph.  I immediately regretted my decision to let my health insurance lag (don’t worry Mom – I got my new policy as soon as I got home!).  I also learned the importance of dehydrating before an Ethiopian road trip.  On our one pit stop, I had to use a bathroom that I would rate -.5 on my scale of 1 – 5 (1 being smelly, stanky U.S. gas station bathroom and 5 being Nordstroms).   Once we arrived, began re-hydrating and checked in to our hotel, we made it over to the hospital site as they were finishing setting up for the surgeries that began early Saturday morning. 

For those of you not familiar with Operation Smile, it is a wonderful organization that provides cleft lip and palate surgeries to people who could otherwise not afford it.  I was so impressed by the organization and the volunteers.  The doctors, nurses, medical records specialist, speech therapist and every single person that was there had a heart of gold.  I even ran into a girl that I went to JMU with!  It doesn’t surprise me – the thing that attracted me most to JMU was their service-oriented group of students and that spirit is still alive.  I recognized Lisa at first glance, but it took a full day to figure out how we knew each other at JMU which ended up being a mutual friend who I was an RA with! 

All of staff and volunteers had the “can do” spirit and made the best of otherwise sometimes very poor situations.  Just check out how a doctor propped up the IV bag on a window latch. 
It is certainly not what most medical professionals are used to but they volunteer their time and services to help those less fortunate.  Definitely check out their website to give or volunteer (you don’t have to have medical experience!) – http://www.operationsmile.org/

The best part of the weekend was seeing the faces of the parents when they saw their child for the first time after the surgery.  It took them a second to recognize their very old child and then just tears of joy would stream down their face. There is no cure for cleft lip and no exact explanation of why it happens but with any physical difference, you can imagine the pain and emotional trauma that these people (and their families) may experience.  And it wasn’t just children – people in their 30s were also getting the surgery done.  How life changing!  Since we were just there for two days (out of five days of surgeries), we helped where we could which included sorting medical records (no HIPAA rules here), entertaining hungry and scared children while they awaited surgery, distributing lunch for the waiting families, passing out donated shoes and guarding the OR door. 

Overall it was a great weekend.  A lot of Peace Corps volunteers were there as well so it was good to meet part of the crew that is stationed in Ethiopia and hear about some of the work they are doing. 

I kept my eyes peeled for Jessica Simpson to no avail.  No worries - my heart was overjoyed all weekend with the exact people that were there.  Operation Smile is scheduled to come to Addis in October and I’m already looking forward to volunteering with them again!

Much love from one smiling girl,

Lisa