margherita mirabella-photographer

Thies, Senegal

Operation Smile is an international children's medical charity that heals children's smiles, forever changing their lives. Every three minutes a child is born with a cleft. One in 10 of those children will die before their first birthday. The children who survive are often unable to eat, speak, socialize or smile. In some places, they are shunned and rejected. And in too many cases, their parents can't afford to give them the surgeries they need to live a productive life. Since 1982, Operation Smile, through the help of dedicated medical volunteers, has provided more than 3.5 million comprehensive patient evaluations and over 200,000 free surgeries for children and young adults born with facial deformities

Ruhengeri, Rwanda

http://www.operationsmile.org/enoks-path Enok remembers being jeered, mocked, chased by packs of children and having people recoil in disgust at his cleft lip. While his memories echo the stories of thousands of Operation Smile patients – most young children – Enok already endured a lifetime of torment when he received surgery at 25 years old. Suffering from a severe bilateral cleft lip, Enok finally summoned the courage to seek help during an Operation Smile medical mission to Rwanda in 2013. Even then, Enok was reluctant to receive surgery. It was on a visit to his village that Operation Smile volunteers saw him persuaded. “If they were not here to convince me, I wouldn’t be able to temper going into a bar and sitting with other people and sharing a cup,” Enok said. “But now I can enter into any place and people even come to share the cup with me.”

Ho, Ghana

On the 19th November, more than 500 people, candidates and caretakers, coming from all 10 regions in Ghana arrived at the Volta Regional Hospital. For many it was the first time they had seen other people with cleft lip and cleft palate and they were relieved to see that they were not the only ones in the world with such a condition. All 256 candidates received free medical evaluations from our 75 medical volunteers who came from Germany, Ghana, Italy, Russia, South Africa, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Antsirabe, Madagascar

Ho, Ghana

On the 19th November, more than 500 people, candidates and caretakers, coming from all 10 regions in Ghana arrived at the Volta Regional Hospital. For many it was the first time they had seen other people with cleft lip and cleft palate and they were relieved to see that they were not the only ones in the world with such a condition. All 256 candidates received free medical evaluations from our 75 medical volunteers who came from Germany, Ghana, Italy, Russia, South Africa, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Ho, Ghana

On the 19th November, more than 500 people, candidates and caretakers, coming from all 10 regions in Ghana arrived at the Volta Regional Hospital. For many it was the first time they had seen other people with cleft lip and cleft palate and they were relieved to see that they were not the only ones in the world with such a condition. All 256 candidates received free medical evaluations from our 75 medical volunteers who came from Germany, Ghana, Italy, Russia, South Africa, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Addis Abeba, Ethiopia

Ho, Ghana

On the 19th November, more than 500 people, candidates and caretakers, coming from all 10 regions in Ghana arrived at the Volta Regional Hospital. For many it was the first time they had seen other people with cleft lip and cleft palate and they were relieved to see that they were not the only ones in the world with such a condition. All 256 candidates received free medical evaluations from our 75 medical volunteers who came from Germany, Ghana, Italy, Russia, South Africa, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Manila, Philippines

Hanoi, Vietnam. Six months after Surgery

Kigali, Rwanda. Alejandro before surgery.

17 years… A 17 year old girl is walking towards us, holding her baby, wrapped up in a cotton blanket, on her back. She gets into our car and makes a simple move to let the baby gently slides from her back into her arms. She then lets me hold the baby for the ride; she lets me do that as if she has known me forever. The baby is beautiful. I am not sure if I am holding him correctly; I am holding his head because the road is not a road and we drive on rocks and grassy paths. Goats are everywhere, children are running and holding big cans with water. We are on one of the thousands hills of Rwanda, a place with an incredible view and no running water. She shows us the way to her house where she lives alone with her baby. A cow is the closest neighbor; a white threadbare curtain with painted dolls is the doorway. Inside there is a small space to sit; everything, or the “nothing,” is trim and clean: the tiny table with a blue cover, a vase with fresh flowers and a huge mountain of dried leaves. She smiles when she sees Russell’s card with the Operation Smile “before and after photos.” She cannot believe that her baby can be fixed, and she tells us that she wants him to be handsome, healthy, able to eat and speak properly so he can go to school. She wants a different future for him. She got pregnant by a man who doesn’t want to be with her or with their baby; someone who never saw the baby, not once, not even when she asked him for help. The baby, Alejandro is his name, never cries, not even when his mother is changing his diaper, a piece of cotton rolled into a piece of plastic… Alejandro is so curious about us and he is smiling and looking around with his huge sweet eyes. He doesn’t know yet that if he stays with his cleft lip very soon he will feel different, probably he will be mocked by other children, and his beautiful shiny eyes will lose their light and they will be sad, angry. Feeling rejected is a terrible sensation: you want to be loved, you want to look like everyone else, you want to talk like everyone else. Eat and kiss like everyone else…Alejandro has a chance to have surgery in September. Operation Smile will be here in Rwanda, in the country of a thousand hills, where maybe thousands of children are waiting for a chance to get a smile.