On the border between Inner Mongolia and the coal-mining region of China, where people are so poor they still live in caves with no water or electricity, I met the most amazing family.

The Fan family.

This family was well-known to our partner hospital because four of the seven babies they adopted were born with clefts. All of them had been abandoned and left to die by their families.

And all of them and received surgery thanks to our program.

It is quite common in developing countries for families to abandon and sometimes even kill babies born with clefts. Most of them do not understand it is a birth defect that be easily fixed. They often think is it a curse or evil omen or mark of the devil. 

Over the years, I met a lot of peasants who adopted and saved babies with clefts that had been abandoned including a beggar who found a newborn baby that was left on a garbage heap. 

But I had never met anyone who had adopted 4 babies with clefts. Mr. Fan, in the middle, to my right, is 32 years old. That’s his father on the far right, his wife next to him and his mom on the far left. These are five of their kids, three more are asleep inside.

Eight children and six adults live in their three-room, unheated, crumbling brick house with no front door. There were goats outside the house and up on the roof.  

They told us feel very lucky to live here as 20 years ago the family was so poor it actually lived in a cave as many families do in this region. 

Inside the house we found three babies asleep on a communal bed. It was 20 degrees outside.

The only heat inside was coming from a wood fire in the kitchen. There was no chimney so the kitchen ceiling was black from decades of smoke.

Amidst all the squalor, poverty, and freezing cold, Mr. Fan had a big smile on his face. He and his wife and family were all very happy and grateful  Smile Train was able to help four of his children.

Each one had been born with a severe cleft and without surgery, life would have been a very long and painful struggle. We thanked him for letting us visit and wished him and his family well.