Dana L. Yeoman, DDS
Dentures and Implants
The Power of a Smile to Transcend Borders Part 19
Site last published: 08/28/10
The Power of a Smile to Transcend Borders Part 19
During my stay in and around Kiev, Ukraine, I had visited a number of orphanages. Each was poor and needed help. This made the children particularly grateful to have our team do all their dentistry for free, also they were happy because we used anesthetic. We lived with the children in the dormitories and experienced some of their hardships. Still, everything was basically humane, even if the water would randomly stop running now and then throughout the week.
Mostysche Orphanage was a dismal place that called itself ‘home’ for more than a 100 children between the ages of 7 and 17. It was located in a poor farming village, a far cry from the bustling Capitol. We passed horse-drawn carts and herds of cows in the road. A gaggle of white geese scattered in front of our bus. It was like stepping back into time, only there was nothing quaint about Mostysche.
The conditions of the orphanage were bleak and on the verge of inhumane. The children each had a set of pajamas and one set of clothing. They doubled them up in the winter time to stay warm. All they had to wear was donated, and the girl who drew sandals out of the clothing lottery had to wear them year round. The children carried their possessions with them everywhere, because if something was left in their room, it was inevitably stolen.
We learned the electricity had been turned off several times the previous winter. The unpaid electrical bill was a whopping $600, and the orphanage had no money to pay it. To give it scale, a Ukrainian university professor makes about $204 per year.
The orphanage conducted its own school in its school rooms. Classes offered life skills like “How to Work a Modern Oven” since most of the children had never seen one. When receiving the tour of the educational facilities, the teachers shyly admitted they did not have writing paper to teach properly. The kids waited turns to use pencils, and wrote in the margins of previous homework assignments. Likewise, when proudly showing their home-ec room, fitted with hand-turned sewing machines, we discovered they had no fabric to teach sewing.
There were two outdoor shower heads. There was no hot water. They were allowed to bathe once every ten days. Most kept their heads shaved for hygienic reasons. They had a broken washing machine and an old bathtub to wring out the water by hand. For this reason, clothes and bedding were not washed very often. For over 100 children, there were two working toilets for the girls and one working toilet for the boys. The stench in the boys’ hallway was overwhelming.
Asking the teachers what they needed most was sobering. “Soap.”
The feeling of the team when leaving was one of being completely powerless. The dentistry alone would take several dentists working full speed several weeks, and this would barely touch the emergency needs. All of us felt simply overwhelmed. Our team had given a small concert and program for the children, hoping to elicit smiles and make friends. The smiles were slow in coming. They were starved for attention, but it was difficult to get responses from many of them. Several in our group (including myself) described a horrible impulse to cry when singing for the children. What could songs mean to a hundred children who had nothing? The team left discouraged and haunted.
Back in the city, buying trinkets and souvenirs suddenly seemed much less important. We had some serious work to do.