Chris Meloni and his wife travel to Haiti with Smile Train Co-Founder Brian Mullaney.
“As a father of 2 young children, I can only imagine the tremendous pain and heartache a cleft can cause. I’m thankful to be in a position to help these children get their smiles back.”
TV and movie star Chris Meloni and his wife Sherman came to Haiti with us on a Smile Train trip and it was an amazing experience for them – and for us.
Brian Mullaney took them to the worst slums and ghettos in Haiti and show them how difficult life is on this island that is just a few hours off the coast of Florida.
Afterwards, we brought Chris Meloni and his wife to a small village hospital where we were helping provide free cleft surgery for several hundred children who couldn’t afford it. Chris got to scrub in on a surgery and actually assisted our partner surgeon with a cleft surgery of a little girl named Bergaline.
You don’t know how difficult it is to get a famous celebrity or wealthy donor to come on a trip like this with us. Most of them are happy to write a check but getting on a plane and going to the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere is very, very rare.
Of course, Chris Meloni is not your typical celebrity.
Chris Meloni is very down to earth, approachable, smart, funny and philanthropic.
He helped us a tremendous amount of both the Smile Train and WonderWork with donations, appearances at our events, going on trips like this and even writing a letter that we sent to tens of thousands of donors.
HERE’S WHAT CHRIS WROTE ABOUT HIS TRIP TO HAITI WITH US….
“Are you out of your mind?!”
That was my initial response when my friends at The Smile Train called and asked me if I would like to go with them on a trip to Haiti.
I mean, I love The Smile Train. My wife and I have been donors for years, but the thought of going to Haiti was a little scary. But when they told me I’d meet hundreds of kids and actually get to observe a cleft surgery I was interested. When they told me my wife Sherman could come too that closed the deal.
The flight to Haiti from New York is just a little more than 3 hours but the distance between our two countries is VAST.
I did a little homework before my trip and what I learned was really shocking.
The U.S. is the richest country in the history of the world with an average per capita income of about $40,000 a year.
Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere with an average per capita income of $400 a year.
Yes, $400 a year. That is $1.09 a day.
80% of Haitians live in poverty. 50% cannot read. The healthcare system is in shambles. Average life expectancy is 53 years. Almost one out of every 10 babies dies before their first birthday. HIV/AIDS affects 5% of the population and has created more than 200,000 aids orphans. The human rights situation is “catastrophic”. Unemployment in Haiti is about 85%. And as if things couldn’t get any worse, 4 major hurricanes pummeled the island last year.
When our plane landed in Port-au-Prince, my wife and I braced ourselves. We were about to experience one of the poorest, saddest, Godforsaken places on our planet.
We went right from the airport to Cité Soleil, a densely populated shanty town where about 300,000 people live in unimaginable circumstances. It is one of the poorest slums in the entire world. In Cité Soleil there are no police, no sewers, no stores and little to no electricity or running water.
I have never seen anything like it.
Mountains of garbage, rivers of raw sewage with wild pigs swimming in it.
The stench was overwhelming. As we walked around it felt to me like I was walking on a gigantic landfill, stepping on garbage, human excrement, litter, refuse, rotting food, you name it while hundreds of wild pigs were snorting and foraging all around us.
I remember thinking, “My God, all of these people are actually living on a giant, steaming, smoldering garbage dump like rats.” Everywhere I looked people were foraging too, just like the pigs, looking for food, for plastic or metal cans, for anything they could use, like shoes or clothing.
I thought of Dante’s inferno and its Map of Hell – this place would have fit right in.
I was worried about ruining my shoes until I noticed that none of the hundreds of children, we saw had any shoes. Many of them were barely clothed, some of them naked, all of them friendly, waving with big, beautiful smiles. They were very curious as to what brought us here to their neighborhood, where we didn’t exactly fit in.
Many rubbed their bellies and held out their hands, the international signal that says I am hungry will you give me some money.
The shacks and shanties these people are living in are just beyond description. Twisted pieces of tin and metal held together with rope. Little hovels made out of cinder blocks with padlocked doors and plastic on the roof. I peeked in a few of these shacks and each one had a dirt floor, little to no furniture, maybe a plastic lawn chair, no electricity and no water. Everyone was carrying plastic water containers to and from public pumps or wells.
We came across a market where I saw something I will never forget.
A woman selling cookies, made out of mud. Cookies that people actually buy and eat. I was incredulous. I held one and smelled it. Why would anyone eat something like this?
I was told that in Haiti, for many people, the hunger pains are so bad they are given the nickname Clorox. Because it feels like there is bleach eating away at the walls of your stomach. So, some children eat these mud cookies to fill their stomachs and fend off the hunger pains at least for a while.
I stood there holding one of these mud cookies shaking my head.
How can it be that just off the coast of the richest country in the world, a country that pays some of its farmers billions of dollars every year NOT to grow anything, are 8 million people starving on an island eating cookies made out of mud?
“How can this happen?” ~ Chris Meloni
What is even more ironic is that the biggest health problem we face in the U.S. these days is obesity. It’s true. The leading cause of death in the U.S. is coronary and heart problems related to obesity.
In America, 32% of us are overweight, 34% are obese. We are eating ourselves to death, while our poor Haitian neighbors are eating mud.
Well, my depression lifted immediately when we got to our Smile Train partner hospital and saw HUNDREDS of children and adults who had come from all over Haiti to be helped. The Smile Train distributed posters ran radio and TV ads and spread the world far and wide that every baby, child and adult with a cleft who came to this hospital would be guaranteed free surgery.
I must say, it was a little overwhelming for me to see so many clefts in one place at one time. Some of them were extreme. I plastered a smile on my face and dove into the crowd.
Sherman and I spent a lot of time meeting as many children and their parents as we could. Through our interpreter who spoke Creole, we asked all kinds of questions such as how they heard about The Smile Train and how far they had come. What life was like for their child with a cleft, what they hoped life would be like after surgery, what this meant to them, etc.
What I came away with was that this Smile Train program was their only chance to ever get cleft surgery for their child. Many of these children had traveled for days, by foot, by boat, by bus, from very far away because this was their one chance, their one shot.
Most of them when they showed up got very nervous and worried when they saw hundreds of other children and adults with clefts, fearing that there were limited resources and only a few would be helped. When they learned every child and adult would receive a surgery date, it was such a relief.
I will never forget one man I met, Bartholomew, who is 42 years old. His cleft was so severe, all I could think of was how difficult his life has been and all of the pain and heartache he must have endured over the past 42 years.
How sad that all of his suffering could have been prevented if someone had just helped him when he was a little boy. How different his life might have been had The Smile Train been around 42 years ago. This poor soul had waited 42 years for a surgery that can take just 45 minutes.
And I will never forget a little 7-year-old girl that literally jumped into my arms – and into my heart.
Little Bergaline had a severe cleft too, like Bartholomew, but she wasn’t going to have to suffer for 42 years with her cleft.
Bergaline and her Mother lived in Cité Soleil. A neighbor who could read had told them about our Smile Train program and they were so excited. Her Mom told me she really feared for her daughter’s future. She said never in a thousand years could she ever raise enough money to help her child. We talked a bit and I got to know them a little better and then it was time. I reassured her Mom and then lifted Bergaline up and carried her into the O.R. to observe my very first cleft surgery.
And 45 minutes that would change the rest of Bergaline’s life.
I have to tell you that helping to prep little Bergaline and putting the anesthesia mask on her face and watching her fall asleep was something I will never forget. I was so excited for her. I watched her surgery intently. I felt like my new friend Bergaline deserved something wonderful.
I wanted this to be the best cleft surgery ever done.
Her surgeon, Dr. Michael Schaefer, was fantastic. He gave me a play-by-play as he gently, expertly and methodically deconstructed Bergaline’s cleft and then artfully put the pieces back together just like a jigsaw puzzle. I helped, just a little. I got to cut a few sutures here and there and the gracious surgeon put up with all my questions.
I was really blown away with how dramatic the transformation was – as well as how quickly it all happened.
There was a big clock on the wall and believe me, I was watching it. In Smile Train direct mail, they always say the surgery takes as little as 45 minutes and I must say I have always been a little skeptical about that claim. But sure enough, in under an hour, about 50 minutes, I was lifting a sleeping Bergaline up from that O.R. table and carrying her to the post-op area. (Without all my questions and suture cutting they probably would have been done in 35 minutes!)
I almost sprinted to go get Bergaline’s Mother. I gave her a hug, told her everything went fine and brought her in to see her daughter’s new smile. When she saw how good her little Bergaline looked, she started dancing and crying and hugging me and everyone within half a mile.
Her little girl looked beautiful.
There was not a dry eye in the room as we watched this Mom cry tears of joy as she danced and hugged and said thank you again and again and again and again. Wow.
When I got out of my scrubs, I sat down in a hallway to drink some water and take a break. It had been a pretty intense day. I was spent.
But as I looked out the window at all the children and their parents that were still standing in a long line, waiting to register, or arriving by foot after days of travel, it hit me even harder.
These kids have to be helped. None of these children can be turned away.
Now that I had witnessed this miracle that they call cleft surgery, now that I had seen it with my own eyes, it really changed the way I thought about what The Smile Train is really all about.
Before I went to Haiti, I thought it was a well-run charity that was doing some good work and helping a lot of kids. But I came back from Haiti with a much more intense point of view and a much greater sense of urgency.
There are millions of poor children in the world who are suffering with unrepaired clefts.
All of their suffering is completely unnecessary.
Every single one of these kids can be helped with this simple, cheap, quick surgery.
The Smile Train is working feverishly to raise enough money to help as many children as quickly as it can.
It’s that simple.
As for me, I am more pleased than ever that a few years ago I got on board The Smile Train. Very glad I went to Haiti. And more determined than ever to do everything I can to help them help these kids.
If you can help us too, that would be great. If enough of us pitch in, we can actually solve this problem, we can help all the kids who are out there waiting for their chance to smile.
Thanks for reading this and thanks for helping these kids.
All the best,
Chris Meloni
