You're Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile!

This week Operation Smile is doing a mission in Cairo and I've been chaperoning our student volunteers at the hospital.

If you don't already know this, I've always had a serious issue with hospitals. It's a place of needles and death. But this was different, hospitals are now, for me, a place of smiles and hope.

We went to the hospital to keep happy and occupied children just going in to or coming out of surgery - and to speak to their mothers and families, some of whom had been at the hospital for days awaiting their surgery. Mothers confided in us, children giggled, laughed and played with our student volunteers who were as taken with the children as the children were with them.

I could only communicate minimally with the families - in my pidgin Arabic which I really need to develop; however I was able to act as a guide for my students through what for many of them was their first volunteer experience, and help in small ways.

I also met really great and interesting people. A big shout-out to Kholoud and Esperons (who flew in all the way from NYC at the last minute to volunteer in her home country of Egypt!) - two great volunteers I enjoyed spending time with at the hospital. I also met a veiled woman who is a beautician and hairdresser, but only for other women who have taken up the full black hijab and abaya. She told my students she makes her clients pretty like their non-Egyptian teacher (me) - which they were a bit embarassed to tell me (and I was a bit embarrassed to hear!) She also asked them why I wasn't married - the only response I could think of in Arabic was "Ana Amerikaya" - I'm American, which I said jokingly; as if that excused my spinsterhood. The woman then vowed to find me a good husband - insh'allah!

But most important, and most memorable, were the beautiful children - their smiles (before and after surgery) were worth all the time in the world.