For most people coming to America is certainly a time of uncertainty, and this includes me. One tends to have mixed emotions especially when faced with such a life changing experience as I came to go head to head with.

I have to admit that I was a little skeptical about the reception I might get from Americans especially coming from South Africa. This is because I had been given different perceptions about them, therefore I did not know what to expect. I arrived in the U.S thinking that I would have trouble adjusting to such a competitive environment, but then to my amazement I came to discover that America was quite similar to South Africa.

It was through the Douglas foundation and the Make a Difference foundation (MAD) that I would be blessed with the opportunity to attend such a wonderful conference, the opportunity to share insight with young people of such different cultural backgrounds. It was through these organizations that I would be introduced to two South African colleagues who had been studying in the United States at the time and Claudia Masemola, whom along with a MAD representative I would attend this conference with.  After  meeting with them , I felt more at home as it takes something as small as speaking Zulu which is a South African native language, to set one’s heart as ease especially being in a foreign country. It was through them that I was able to come outside of my comfort zone and rise to task at hand.

Even so, at the start of the Operation Smile conference I felt intimidated by the presence of such bright minds. It felt as if I would succumb to my fears and go through the conference without having a contribution to bring to the table. Attending such a conference makes one realize that it takes a small contribution to make a big difference to someone less fortunate than you and I, which in this case is a little child whose very existence is seen as a curse to his or her parents and their community as a result of a facial defect.

Such a child is unable to experience the joys of being a child as other children are scared of them. In other cases where it is perfectly known that children can be the cruelest people in the world, they often get teased by their peers. Exposure to such behavior especially for a child can be traumatizing and can lead to a rather low self confidence, and contemplation of suicide. Some communities banish these children and their parents from their villages while others embrace it thinking it is a gift from the gods, all of this as a result of common misconceptions about the causes of a cleft lip or palate

It is therefore in my opinion our responsibility to not only “change the world one smile at a time” but to ensure that in the near future such defects are prevented and no one is unable to express their happiness through something as simple as a smile.

Sidwell Mashile
Piney Woods School