DISCURSOS - Rotary International
DISCURSOS - Rotary International
DISCURSOS - Rotary International
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The Power of Sharing Your <strong>Rotary</strong> Moment<br />
Monty J. Audenart<br />
Aide to the RI President-elect<br />
Twenty-four years ago, I left Canada with my skills in one hand and my heart in the other to serve<br />
as a <strong>Rotary</strong> dental volunteer to a 3-H — Health, Hunger and Humanity — project in Jamaica. I<br />
have to admit to you that the closer I got to leaving home, the more anxiety I had. In fact, just<br />
days before I was due to depart, my wife, Liz, and I were driving down the road in our car, and<br />
I suggested to her, “You know, I have a busy dental practice, we still have five young children<br />
at home, we’re busy in our community and with our church, and perhaps this just isn’t the right<br />
time to go?” Without hesitation, Liz turned to me and said, “Well, you know Monty, there never<br />
will be a right time.” And so I went.<br />
I had an early-morning flight, and the night before I left, I slipped into each of my children’s bedrooms<br />
and hugged and kissed them goodbye, telling each that I would be back in a month, that<br />
I needed to go and help some children whom I had never met, who perhaps had never had the<br />
chance to see a dentist, and that while I was away, they would be in the kind care and keeping of<br />
their mother.<br />
My youngest son, Ryan, was only eight years old at the time. After I had been gone two or three<br />
weeks, I got a letter from him. It read, “Hi Dad its Ryan again. I hope you get home safely. You<br />
are my best dad, and if I ever had another dad, you would still be my BEST dad.”<br />
I don’t know what was going on at home, but I didn’t stay away too long.<br />
To make things even more challenging, a few weeks before I arrived, the <strong>Rotary</strong> clinic was destroyed<br />
in Hurricane Gilbert, in winds strong enough to take the tops off all the trees, and the<br />
dental work was shifted to government clinics. Each morning when I arrived at a clinic, a sea of<br />
people would be waiting. I would greet them, and in unison, they would respond, “Good morning,<br />
Doctor!”<br />
All of them had toothaches and needed extractions. There were so many patients that came,<br />
many dressed in their very best just to see the dentist. The work was hot and strenuous. The<br />
clinic had no X-ray, no dental drill, no suction, only a pail to spit in on the floor. Frequently the<br />
power went off, and when it did, the nurse would help by shining a flashlight in the patient’s<br />
mouth. Other times, in the 90-degree heat, she would wipe my brow so my sweat would not<br />
drip onto the patient’s face. But I’ll never forget that late morning when a young Jamaican mother<br />
brought her little four- or five-year-old girl around to the outside of the clinic and held her up to<br />
the louvered windows where we were working. I can still hear her voice. “Doctor,” she said, “my<br />
daughter has a terrible toothache. We have walked all night to get here. Won’t you please see my<br />
little girl?”<br />
We never turned anyone away. And ever so slowly, I began to love the people. A few weeks later,<br />
I called home and asked Liz to come down, because I wanted her to see what <strong>Rotary</strong> was doing<br />
and to share the experience of service with me, and of course I missed her. And so, for the last<br />
week, she assisted in the clinic, and many people, after having extractions, got up out of that<br />
chair and shook our hands and thanked <strong>Rotary</strong> for coming.<br />
Some 800 extractions later, my wife and I sat in that airplane on the tarmac in Montego Bay,<br />
ready to come home, and as I looked out the window that morning and watched the mist settle<br />
gently down over the distant hills, I thought of all that I had been able to do during the past<br />
month, and then I thought of all that I was not able to do — and I wept like a little child. It’s the<br />
day I went from being a member of a <strong>Rotary</strong> club to becoming a Rotarian. It’s the day The <strong>Rotary</strong><br />
42 <strong>International</strong> Assembly Speeches 2013