All Aboard the Smile Train

The doctors and nurses of GSF and Barthemee hospital

Little Mohammed Ka before surgery...

At the beginning of November I was given the honor of working with a group of thirteen American doctors and nurses from the Global Smile Foundation who came to Barthimee Hospital in Thies to do cleft lip surgeries. In just four short days they were able to completely transform the faces (and lives) of thirty patients, from infants to adults, as well as provide additional training to a group of Senegalese doctors who perform cleft surgery locally. As a Peace Corps volunteer my role was to translate between the American staff and the Senegalese patients and families, as well as provide an extra set of hands wherever they were needed. I spent most of my time in the PACU, where the patients were taken to recover from the anesthesia, playing with babies and reassuring mothers and translating instructions for families. I also got to be in the operating room for a couple of surgeries to watch the magic unfold.

...and after!

Cleft lips and palates aren't as prevalent in Africans as they are in other people groups, but when they do occur in countries like Senegal the odds that the family will find treatment for the child are pretty low. Not only are many cleft patients born into poor families who live far from medical care, but those families also rarely understand anything about the deformity or know it can be repaired. There are a lot of superstitions in Senegal, and many of the families we spoke to believed that the cleft was caused because someone scared the pregnant mother while she was sleeping, or because a cow looked the baby directly in the eye while it was in the womb, or simply because Allah willed it. Although they can make it difficult for a baby to breast feed, cleft lips and palates are rarely life threatening conditions, but in a culture where the smallest difference makes you a social outcast they can still be largely debilitating. It was amazing to see just how life-changing a one hour surgery could be. All of the patients looked so natural after surgery it was almost impossible to remember what they had looked like before.

Abdou Ba right before his surgery, still smiling!

One of my favorite patients of the week was Abdou Ba, a 10 year old Pulaar boy from the Tamba region with a complete bilateral cleft lip as well as a cleft hard and soft palate. I met him several days before the surgeries began when he arrived at the Peace Corps training center with his uncle, also named Abdou Ba, to stay with us throughout the course of the surgeries. Despite his major facial deformities and a pretty serious speech impediment he had the most outgoing and social personality of any Senegalese kid I've ever met. Everyone at the center, volunteers and guards alike, immediately fell in love with him and spoiled him rotten in the days before the doctors arrived. His charm wasn't lost on the Americans either, and he quickly became a staff favorite at the hospital. He was born in a small village in southern Senegal and when his father passed away shortly after he was born his mother remarried and moved to the north, and left him with his uncle Abdou, the man he was named after. Because of the speech impediment caused by his cleft palate he was unable to attend school, but his uncle did his best to give him a normal life and when he heard about the possibility of getting surgery through an NGO he made the 6 hour, $20 journey to Thies several times for screenings from other organizations before being approved for the operation by the doctors of the Global Smile Foundation.

To understand just how amazing this is, you have to first understand that Senegalese men are only marginally involved in the raising of their children and are almost never the primary care givers, and second realize that $20 is an obscene amount of money to the average Senegalese villager. Abdou was the only patient not accompanied by a mother or aunt, yet his uncle was by far one of the most nurturing and competent care takers there. It was really heart-warming to see the special relationship between the two of them, and to see just how much Abdou's uncle cared for him. All of the surgeries were amazing, but the fantastic job the doctors did on this particular case actually brought tears to my eyes. In just two hours he became a completely different person, and after the incision heals and the swelling goes down I don't think anyone will even give him a second glance on the street. He will still have difficulties with speech thanks to the enormous hole in his palate, but his uncle seems committed to finding him the help he needs no matter what the cost, so hopefully he will be able to receive further treatment from another organization.

Abdou just one hour after his surgery, still a  little groggy
but looking pretty good!

   Working with the people from Global Smile Foundation was the single most rewarding experience of my time in Senegal so far. So much of the work we do as Peace Corps volunteers revolves around behavior change and long-term initiatives, and by the time they start actually taking effect our short two-year service is long over. It was so refreshing to work on a project that provided such dramatic and immediate results. We could actually see people's lives being improved right before our eyes, and know that it was a permanent and lasting change. Both the families and the doctors were so thankful for our small contribution to the efforts, and it was then that I realized how infrequently I hear the words "thank you" associated with any of my work here. Not that I'm volunteering just so I can be thanked, but it feels really good to be recognized and appreciated every once and a while. Working with the American's was also a real treat...it almost felt like being back home. Everything was organized, efficient and timely, and we were given clear instructions and a specific task to be done, and then trusted to do it! They were also amazingly kind and accommodating, allowing us to observe and being patient while answering all of our questions about the procedures. Best of all they spoiled us rotten with dinner at nice restaurants and treats from America!

Abdou's before and after shots

After working and talking extensively with the nurses with GSF, I've actually been entertaining the idea of going into nursing. Its not a career path I'd ever given any thought to before, but the more I think about it the more I wonder why it has never crossed my mind? I really enjoyed working with the patients and feeling like I was really helping people, and the medical-related classes in my Exercise Science major were always my favorites. I haven't made up my mind about anything yet, but with my service rapidly drawing to a close (5 more months!) I've been doing a lot of thinking about what my next steps might be. If I did go to nursing school it wouldn't be right away, I would want to save up some money for a year or two before going back to school for any reason, but it's certainly something to look into. Who knows, maybe these cleft surgeries will end up changing my life as well?!

Get out there

I've been getting a lot of messages lately from friends and family talking about how proud they are of me for volunteering. I really appreciate all of the support (it makes my day!) but I wanted to let you guys know that it doesn't take 2 years in the middle of nowhere Africa to make a difference. There are plenty of things you can do right in your own community that don't involve exposure to scary bugs and strange diseases that can make just as big of an impact on the world as what I'm doing here in Senegal.



Check out www.serve.gov for some inspiration and to find volunteering opportunities right in your own back yard. Volunteering doesn't have to be a chore...find something you're passionate about and share it with your community. If you like to grow vegetables talk to your local school about building a school garden, if you like to exercise think about competing for a charity, if you love to read take a book to your local senior center.





I've posted volunteering statistics for the three states that have the most visitors to my blog (thank you Google Analytics), if you're curious about your own state check out volunteeringinamerica.gov. Personally I'm a bit embarrassed for New Jersey...we're ranked dead last in volunteer hours per person and 49th for volunteer rate. Step it up garden state!

Type Three Fun

It is generally accepted within the adventure community that there are three types of fun:

Type 1 fun...something that sounds like fun when you're planning it, is fun while you're doing it, and provides some good conversation at the bar at the end of the day.

Type 2 fun...sounds like its going to be fun, but during the actual activity something goes wrong and it becomes decidedly not fun. This fun generally results in an story worth telling at least a dozen times.

Type 3 fun...is only for the truly insane and probably shouldn't be considered fun at all. It doesn't sound like its going to be fun, and its absolutely miserable while you're doing it, but it makes the best stories and is by far the most fun to talk about.

Today I had an epic dose of type three fun.

For some reason, I decided at the beginning of this month that participating in the Polar Bear Plunge by jumping into the Chesapeake Bay in the middle of winter would be a good idea. I knew I was potentially setting myself up for some major type three fun, but I figured it might be useful to have a really cold moment to look back on when I'm sweating to death in Senegal. Of course this type of insanity cannot be suffered alone, so I convinced Erin that raising money for the Special Olympics was worth getting a bit chilly.

Little did I know the weather was going to dip into the teens and a nasty snowstorm was going to descend upon the DC Metro area on the exact day we were planning on submerging ourselves in the Chesapeake Bay. By the time we arrived at Sandy Point State Park we were engulfed in a full blown blizzard and the reality of our stupidity began to sink in. We arrived several hours early to beat the registration lines which gave us plenty of time to contemplate the pain we were about to endure. Terrified, we stood in the party tent next to the heater and watched what were possibly the last minutes of our lives tick away.

When one o'clock rolled around we knew it was now or never so we stripped off our sweats, donned our bathrobes and made a mad dash through the snow in the direction of the beach. Luckily the water was a comparitively "warm" 40 degrees so the actual plunge wasn't nearly as bad as the anticipation. Our feet suffered the most...instantly turning to lifeless bricks, which made it nearly impossible to walk. We hobbled to the changing/warming tents as fast as we could and squeezed our way all the way to the back and stood next to the heater to thaw our toes. It was only then that we realized we had mistakenly run into the mens tent and we were surrounded by hundreds of guys in various stages of undress. Needless to say be booked it out of there as fast as possible and headed back to the main tent to bundle back up.

A 25 mph slide/drive over un-plowed roads meant that our official post-plunge chai lattes at Ebenezers didn't come until a full 3 hours later. Of course by that point we had warmed up considerably and were starting to forget the agony of the experience.

So, bottom line...I knew it wouldn't be fun...it wasn't really fun...but it makes a darn good chapter in my life story.

Its ALIVE!

So after a little over 12 hours of blood, sweat and tears (of frustration)....Frankenbike lives! I see now why somebody left it in a ditch...pretty much everything that could have gone wrong with this bike did. Fortunately between Ava's ingenuity and my determination we ended up getting the job done. I even managed to sand it down and apply a shiny new coat of paint.


I know this looks a whole heck of a lot like the last picture I posted...so here's a list of what's changed:

-Removed broken front and rear derailleurs
-Shortened chain to turn it into a single speed
-New brake cables
-New front brake
-Refurbished rear brake
-New seat
-Fresh paint
-Sweet new name!

I brought it down to the lumber yard today but the guy I was fixing it up for only works nights, so I left it in the office for him. Giving this bike away feels like I'm leaving a little bit of myself here in Farmville. Pretty cool

I want to be a construction worker when I grow up!

I was a bit sore this morning when I woke up, but I spent another 7 hours working on the houses today. They won't be completely finished tonight, but by the end of the week the families should be able to move in. This morning I went up on the roof and helped lay the shingles, then I got back up on the ladder to help finish the siding on the back of one of the houses. Everyone who worked on the house signed the back of the final piece of siding and we all cheered as Tom nailed it in place... now there's a little piece of all of us in this house.

Hanging the final bit of soffit

Stop. Hammer Time!

Today I built a house.

Actually, I spent 10 hours working with Habitat for Humanity's Blitz Build. We're building two houses for two families in one weekend and I must say, its amazing how quickly things get done when lots of people come together. It makes me wonder why it takes contractors at home 6 months to finish a house. I really enjoyed learning all the little tricks and construction terms, and I could spend hours swinging that hammer. Here's a picture of some of my handy work...I helped hang the siding, the F and J strips and put up the soffit. Tomorrow we'll finish off the last bit of siding then hang sheet metal to cover all of the exposed ends.

I spent most of today up on scaffolding and ladders hanging backwards to nail the soffit into the eaves, or leaning over to hang the siding. Everyone thought I was crazy, but I just love being up so high. I'm more focused and aware of my body when there's a 20 foot drop below me, I just feel more alive. When we moved on to the second story in back of the house it was just me and one other woman up there, all of the men wimped out! Then again, it is a loooong way down...

I'm going to go back again tomorrow from 8-5...I"ll be sure to post a picture of the finished product!