DesanaGiving

The OSF (Odontologos Sin Fronteras) Campaign is only about half way finished but the Desana volunteers are heading to Cusco for other work. This year's dentists are an amazing group of young people. I can say that, I am 64 years old. These 'kids' are young..... some only early 20's. They are a combination of dental students and working dentists from Peru, Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Spain. There are seven dentists that made the trip from Spain. Not only was it a long way to come to volunteer, it was very expensive to make the trip..... to give of yourself.... to volunteer to work long hours, get little sleep, set up, tear down, ride in over packed vans and busses, stay in old school buildings in a sleeping bag (the windows did not have glass and it was muy frio), almost no hot water (except for the night in the thermal springs)... but these young people working on this year's dental campaign really impressed me. They could be home playing on their time off but instead they chose to come to Peru to help provide quality dental care to many people who have never seen a dentist.

The communities accept these dentists and volunteers with open arms. July 28th is Peru's Independence Day and when we were in Tarata, we all were allowed to march in the parade. The mayor even asked us to ride in the back of his decorated truck. The people clapped and cheered for us!

Today, we head to Cusco and the dentists head to other small community to set up the dental equipment again and to treat hundreds more.  The campaign this year is expected to treat 4,000 people over a three week period!  Hector Somocurcio, President of OSF Peru, said, "we (OSF) would not be able to treat this many people without the help of Dr Michael Houk (Sioux Falls, SD USA) allowing us to use his (Desana) dental equipment. This equipment has brought the OSF Campaign in to a whole new level of treatment and made it possible to treat many more people each day. Thank you Dr Houk and Desana for your help."

Here are a few pictures from the past few days.  There are more pictures on our photo pages Click Here.