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Louise Kavanagh

Louise Kavanagh in Davao, Philippines – 19-27 February 2009

I will never forget the moment when we arrived at the screening area at Brokenshire Hospital Davao. We walked up a narrow pathway, lined with coconut trees. It led to a covered basketball court where about 200 patients and their families were waiting patiently. Parent’s faces were anxious, hoping that their child would be chosen for surgery. Although there was a large crowd there was only a soft murmur of voices. Realizing what needed to be done we launched ourselves into distracting the children from the lengthy screening process. It was an amazing feeling to be able to stop a baby crying by holding a hand, sharing a smile or just blowing bubbles.

From the moment I arrived at screening on that balmy Friday morning I realized I was taking part in something very special that would be embedded in my memory forever.

Every patient we met was different but all of them had struggled to live a normal life with a cleft. Patients and their families had travelled from all over the island of Mindano, including from areas of conflict hoping to receive surgery. They travelled by foot, car, bus and jeepney (a colorfully decorated tiny public bus that has been used in the Philippines since WW2)

One 9 year old boy called Kenny had a particularly big effect on me. I met him during screening. He walked around covering his face with his hands, ashamed of his bilateral cleft lip and palate. I went over to him, gave him a sticker and tried to talk to him. He couldn’t bear to remove his hands from his face; he just buried his face in his mother’s chest. I watched, my heart aching as he burst into tears when he had to take his hands down to have his photo taken by PIT. No child should have to live in shame like this.

The most rewarding aspect of student programs is the way students are equipped to teach basic health-care presentations. These presentations gave us the opportunity to reach out to the wider Davao community as well as patients and their families. Dental hygiene was a particularly valuable presentation in the Philippines as very few people know how to brush their teeth or had a toothbrush.

In the information pack we were given in our first day we were told about the Philippine tradition of Bayanihan. If someone needed to move house the entire community would gather together and literally move their home by lifting it with 2 long bamboo poles and carrying it. This same spirit of unity was evident throughout our mission as a rainbow of volunteers from every continent gathered together to achieve a common goal. It was a very special experience to be part of a team where everyone was valued equally from the students to the surgeons.

Last Monday morning as I strolled up the familiar leafy drive way of my school the events of the previous two weeks swirled around inside my had. Any small problems or worries that had been bothering me before I left had been erased from my memory and in their place were images of the beautiful smiles of the children that we had helped. Our mission had rushed by me in a whirl-wind of emotions. I felt like I had just woken up from the most incredible dream. It wasn’t until a few days later (when I had recovered from the jet-lag) that I realized that it wasn’t a dream, that it all really happened.

The Operation Smile slogan is “changing lives one smile at a time”, in Davao we created smiles for 153 people but I believe we impacted the lives of many more. We impacted the lives of the families of those 153 patients, we impacted the lives of the children in the 9 different centers, schools and orphanages around the city that we visited and I find great comfort in the knowledge that we also impacted the lives of the other 129 patients that we screened but that did not receive surgery this time. I returned from this mission with a greater understanding of the diversity of the world we live in and of how fortunate I am. It is also true that as well as all the lives changed that I have mentioned above, the lives of the other 51 volunteers that took part in this mission and my life has been changed forever!