After 30 hours of non-stop traveling, we arrived late at night in Kampala, the capital of Uganda. The drive from the airport is eerie, as the city is in total darkness. Electricity is sporadic. Luckily our “hotel” has a generator and mosquito nets.
We wake up early and go to a partner clinic. Our host, Dr. Andrew Hodges, is a young, British plastic surgeon who recently moved back to Uganda from Britain with his wife Sara, also a doctor and anesthesiologist, and three young children.
The Hodges have been helping poor children in Uganda for almost 15 years. They once spent 8 months traveling all across Uganda, operating on poor children with clefts. When there was no electricity, they would use spare headlights attached to a car battery.
You may wonder why a successful plastic surgeon who could easily earn hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in England would choose to take a 95% pay cut and move his family to Uganda. (Ugandan doctors are doing anything they can to leave.)
The Hodges are a special breed indeed. Seven years ago they helped a newborn Ugandan girl abandoned days after birth. They not only fixed her cleft – they adopted her.
Smile Train is lucky to have the Hodges on board. Uganda is lucky to have them, too. There are only 3 or 4 plastic surgeons in the entire country.
