Toothbrushes and Toothpaste

Preparing for our trip to Swaziland and South Africa isn’t taking all that much time or effort. All we really have had to do to prepare is get our shots (check), make some reservations (check), make sure our cats will be fed and watered (check), and, well, I cut off all my hair (I need to post a new picture). Packing will be pretty straight forward, so, what we really have been focusing on is…

When we asked our friends Scott and David, who we are visiting in Swaziland, if there is anything we can bring, without any hesitation they said children’s clothing and toothbrushes and toothpaste.

With the large number of orphaned children, and just general poverty, clothing is something children don’t always have. Many, if not all of us, take using our toothbrushes and toothpaste on a regular basis for granted. As you can imagine, that just simply isn’t the case for most living in a country where rural poverty exceeds 55% in all parts of the country.

Okay, so (my) David and I looked at each other and we pretty quickly agreed that I would take the dental items and he would take care of the children’s clothing. Being a 3rd Grade teacher and having access to both Lost and Found piles at school and the generosity of hundreds of parents, he can take that one. Having graduated from Creighton University in Omaha, NE., and the university having a great tradition of not only “the giving spirit” but also a very good dental school with alumni all over the country, I had a plan.

I first set a goal of how many toothbrushes and tubes of toothpaste I wanted to collect. 500 sounds like a good number, don’t you think? I checked with Scott & David to make sure I wasn’t going too far in my efforts, but Scott said they see 25 patients a day, and we can possibly give them all out while we are there. GREAT!

Working with Creighton’s alumni office, I wrote an email which they sent to the 50+ dental school alumni in the Bay Area, telling the story of our trip, and then asking for a donation. The response has been so very generous, and while people are in process of shipping things to my house, I believe my goal of 500 toothbrushes will be met (the toothpaste seems to be a bit harder to come by).

And, in sharing my story with a couple of friends, don’t you know one person wrote me an email to say that she casually was telling her dentist about our trip and the first thing he said was, “how can I help?”.

One unexpected outcome so far was learning about an organization, Flying Doctors, a volunteer-based nonprofit organization that helps improve the health and well-being of the peoples of Mexico and Central America through the provision of no-cost, high-quality healthcare and health education clinics. A Creighton dental alum is the president of the San Jose chapter and I am going to their October meeting before our trip to share our story and collect their donation for us to take with us.

People in so very many ways are kind, generous, considerate, sharing, caring, and it often comes from places you never expect!

Peace! Love! Back soon…