DISCURSOS - Rotary International

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