Seems like I am alway going to places that no one in their right mind would go.
It takes three airplanes and 26 hours of continuous travel time to get to Shanxi, China, right on the border of Inner Mongolia.
That’s just one reason why nobody goes there.
This is one of China’s poorest provinces and nicknamed the “coal warehouse of China.” It has some of the worst air pollution in the entire world.
The sky is a grey haze that never changes. You could never see the sun just a very faint yellow circle in the sky, trapped behind a heavy blanket of smog. The sky looked as dreary and bleak as the terrain. If emphysema ever became a town, this would be it.
After a bumpy van ride we arrived at the hospital. It’s a 55-year old, run-down, dark and dingy, dirt-poor, government hospital with exposed light bulbs, dark hallways, bad smells, crumbling walls, and broken stairs.
But from the big smiles on the faces of everyone we met, you’d have thought they were all working at The Ritz.
As we toured the hospital they proudly showed us their “state-of-the-art” facilities, quality plaques on the wall, and most importantly, thousands of before-and-after pictures of children they had saved from a lifetime of pain and suffering. The quality of their work was excellent. Their healthy and positive attitudes even better. I went from feeling sorry for them to admiring them pretty darn quick.
We met dozens of cleft patients and their families who had come from near and far to take advantage of our free cleft surgery program. The average income in this area is about $238 per year, or, about 65 cents a day. Without The Smile Train, none of these children would ever receive surgery. And without surgery, no children with clefts are allowed to go to school.
You could tell from their clothing, their posture, their hands, that these were among the poorest peasants in all of China. And yet somehow, they had managed to travel to this hospital with their children in the hopes of being given free cleft surgery.
The nurses were very proud to show us piles of old clothes they had collected for their poorest patients and their families. I was staggered by this.
These nurses who made just $20 – $25 a month were poor themselves. And yet here they were donating their old clothes and collecting other clothes to help their poorest patients. It was inspiring. These were very poor people helping even poorer people.
We saw hundreds of pictures of patients laughing, smiling and hugging nurses, doctors, administrators. “Treat patient like family” read one caption. And it certainly looked and felt that way.
I wondered how these nurses and doctors whom we met could be so compassionate, professional, dedicated, giving, happy and upbeat when they were surrounded by such desperate surroundings. They had a million valid reasons to fail, to quit, to be bitter, mad, angry and selfish.
But they didn’t. They kept going, working hard, serving others with big smiles on their faces. It was humbling to see such character, determination and perseverance.
I wouldn’t have lasted a day working at this hospital.
Our tour ended with a special presentation about their Smile Train program. Members from the entire team including doctors, nurses and administrators spoke.
All of them used the word “we”, again and again and again. It was obvious that The Smile Train was their program, this was their team, these were their children that they were helping.
This is how The Smile Train builds self-sufficiency in very poor but very proud communities. We encourage local doctors and nurses to take ownership. And it is so powerful when that happens.
Unlike traditional two-week medical missions that send American doctors and nurses to developing countries to perform a few surgeries, local doctors and nurses in developing countries are the stars of The Smile Train program. With a little financial support, encouragement and respect, you can empower ordinary people to do quite extraordinary things.
Before Smile Train came along, this hospital performed 20 cleft surgeries a year. This year they will operate on more than 500 children.
Wow. No wonder they’re proud. That’s about ten times more cleft surgeries than any American hospital does. And the quality of their surgeries is excellent.
Pride is the real fuel that powers the Smile Train.
It is more powerful than money.
At a banquet lunch featuring such “delicacies” as donkey-meat burgers, face of camel, and chicken feet, we toasted our partners’ success and thanked them for their partnership. They all beamed.
We then climbed into a rickety old van/ambulance and set out to visit patient homes up in the hills where the poorest of the poor live.
Our first stop was a family that was well-known because four of their children had had clefts and received surgery thanks to our program.
What as more remarkable was that all four of their children with clefts were adopted. This family adopted seven children in seven years. And every baby they adopted that had a cleft had been abandoned.
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, is 32 years old. That’s his father on the 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.
Next we drove up into the hills to visit a family that is not as well off as the Fan Family.
The higher we went, the more difficult it was to drive as the road changed from cement to mud. The snow and ice got worse as we went higher.It was terrifying for all of us as the road got steeper and there were no guard rails.
After we passed a mangled truck hanging off a cliff we started pleading with the driver to slow down. There is no 911 here and if you have an accident no ambulances come and there are no blood banks.
We all breathed a big sigh of relief when we finally stopped at an old Communist commune and scrambled out. Then we started climbing a steep dirt path up towards some caves.
We were here to meet the Liu Family. They live in a one-room cave high on the hillside. They own a very small plot of land. Too small to grow enough food to live on so the neighbors help them get by. They own two chickens but they are too poor to eat the eggs these chickens produce. They sell the egg because they are desperate for money.
So poor and so desperate for money that they live in a cave. Just like thousands of other families in this very poor region.
Here is a photo of their cave. It has no door and it was 22 degrees the day we visited. There is a large stone communal bed with a built-in fireplace at the end of the bed. This blows hot air under the bed to keep it warm. And they also use it to cook. The entire family sleeps in this bed. The newspaper on the walls is to keep dust and dirt from falling off of the wall. And you can see a single lightbulb hanging from a tiny wire. I wondered how they got electricity into this cave.
But the point of this story isn’t that this family is so poor that they live in a cave, but what happened to this family that lives in a cave.
Here’s a picture of the Liu family including their 13 year old daughter and an adopted daughter, Li.
Mrs. Liu told us the story of how Li became part of their family.
Seven years ago, Mrs. Liu was walking in the morning to the river to get water. She came across a newborn crying baby with a severe cleft.
The baby was stuffed in a box with a dirty blanket that had been placed behind a bush along a dirt path. Mrs. Liu stopped, looked at the baby, and then turned and kept walking.
Mrs. Liu passed by the same spot later that afternoon and the baby was still crying. She didn’t stop, she just kept walking.
One more time, Mrs. Liu passed by the same spot again. It is dusk and getting cold as snow flakes start falling. The baby is still crying, whimpering. Mrs. Liu stops. She doesn’t know what to do. Her family is so poor they can barely feed themselves and she already has a six year old girl at home. She knows her husband will be furious if she brings home an abandoned baby. Especially a baby that is deformed. Mrs. Liu has a million good reasons to turn and walk away.
But she doesn’t. She bends over and picks up that crying baby and brings her back to her cave. Her husband doesn’t say a word. Neither does their daughter. They adopt that little girl and name her Li and make her part of their family.
When Li turns six years old, the Lius hear about a free surgery program for children born with clefts. They take a 3 hour bus ride to get to the partner hospital we had just visited. And Li gets her cleft fixed.
The Lius are so happy and grateful for the surgery that changed Li’s life. They us that since her cleft is repaired, Li is now allowed to go to school and they are excited because Li will be the first person in their family to go to school.
As a token of their appreciation, Mr Liu gives three of us these small plastic bags filled with grain that he harvested from the tiny plot of land.
I am of course adamant that I will not accept this. And I thank him profusely but shake my head refuse to take his gift. My country manager grabs me and tells me if I do not accept this gift it will be extremely rude and I will humiliate Mr. Liu.
So I grit my teeth, accept his gift and thank him and his wife for letting us come to visit them. As we are all walking down the dirt path back to the van I come up with a plan to reciprocate. As we say our goodbyes at the van, I shake hands with Mrs. Liu I slip a wad of crumpled bills into her winter coat pocket without her noticing.
As we drive away down the bumpy road in the van, as I am holding on to my little plastic bag filled with grain, I look up at all the frigid caves on the snowy hills and thank God I was born in America. I am shaking my head wondering how there are people in the world who are so poor they are living in caves.
After an hour or so I tell my country manager what I did.
“I hope it’s okay but when I was shaking hands with Mrs. Liu, I slipped a little money into her coat pocket,” I said. ” I felt so bad that they gave us all that grain. I wanted to reciprocate without embarrasing them.”
“That’s fine,” she said. “How much did you give her?”
“Not sure exactly,” I replied. “Probably around 100.”
“That’s great. 100 Chinese Yuan is about $15 U.S. dollars, ” she said. “Their annual income is probably around $100 so that $15 will help them a lot.”
” I didn’t give her 100 Yuan,” I said. ” I gave her $100 U.S. dollars.”
My country manager gasped.Aand didn’t reply.
I went back to gazing out the window. Looking up at those snowy hills.
And kicking myself for not giving Mrs. Liu everything in my wallet.
