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EVEN the security guard is moved by what is going on inside the theatre at Madzikane kaZulu Memorial Hospital.

“Oh my God, those people are wonderful,” she says as she directs me to the theatre where the 37-member Operation Smile team of specialist doctors and nurses have set up shop for two days.

“What a good thing they are doing for these poor people. I only wish God can bless them for their efforts.”

Last Friday and Saturday the doctors and nurses “hijacked” Theatre A at this hospital on the N2 in Mount Frere in the Transkei to “bring one smile at a time” – as their motto puts it – to 25 people, mostly children, who have cleft palates and lips.

The multidisciplinary team, made up of volunteers, includes plastic surgeons, dentists, child therapists, speech therapists, nurses and general practitioners. Most of the volunteers were South Africans, though there were others from Kenya, Morocco and the United States.

Operation Smile South Africa was started in 2006 in Empangeni in KwaZulu-Natal, where a group of volunteers from different countries such as Brazil, Canada, Italy, Kenya, Russia, the United Kingdom and the US operated on 59 children and adults for free.

“You see a visual and a tangible change after 45 minutes,” said Natalie Miller, the regional director for Operation Smile in southern Africa. “After two to three hours of an operation, you can see their lives completely transformed.

“Operation Smile delivers what every child and parent wants most: a chance for a normal childhood.”

The long wait

Zama Makhubo is one of the 25 people whose lives were changed totally in these two days. It took a three-hour operation to reconstruct her cleft lip and palate – wiping away years of loneliness and jeering.

She and her mother, Nontle, a 35-year-old woman who works as a cleaner at a school in Gauteng, had an appalling journey from Bloemfontein, where the child lives, to Mount Frere and almost did not make it.

Their bus broke down on the way to Mount Frere and they had to wait for seven hours for a new bus —but then this one also broke down. It caught fire after a tyre burst in Mount Ayliff, 50 kilometres from Mount Frere.

“We had to be rushed out of the bus,” said Nontle. “I thought to myself that maybe my child was not meant to get this operation.”

But she called the people from Operation Smile and one of them drove to Mount Ayliff to fetch them.

Two-year-old Yonela Daniso’s father, Mlandeli, from Elliotdale said he had been trying to have his daughter operated on since she was born.

“I had been to many hospitals here in the Eastern Cape, but none of them could help her,” he said.

“When she was born I thought maybe I had been cursed. I asked myself why my child was like that, but now that she is going to look more beautiful and be able to smile, I am very happy.”

On Thursday, Mlandeli was waiting for his daughter’s operation. He had arrived at the the hospital on Monday.

Behind the scenes

Inside the theatre there are two tables in action – at one of the tables is Dr Brian Ritchie and Dr Piet Coetzee, both plastic surgeons, while the second table is presided over by Professor Anil Madaree, assisted by nurse Andri Neumann.

Two patients are operated on at the same time, with the most complicated cases done by Madaree, who is head of plastic and reconstructive surgery at the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela School of Medicine in Durban.

After the first day he tells me how well the operations went. They had successfully operated on nine patients, all of them children between one years old and 16. It is 10pm and the group calls it a day. They had been locked in the theatre since 9am.

“Only two patients had double procedures, where they had their upper lips and palates done,” said Madaree.

“There were no major problems or untoward complications. The patients are okay in the ward.

“I am very happy with the way things are and looking forward to another day of helping a child.”

One of the things that touched me was how much satisfaction the Operation Smile people get out of giving their time and skills for free to help others. One of the nurses, Karli Symigton, who helps take care of the patients in the recovery ward after the operations, said: “I am very excited to be part of Operation Smile. It is a lot of hard work but it is for a worthy cause.”

Braam Macherbe, a youth counsellor in the group, said the lives of children with cleft palates and lips were difficult. Besides not being able to eat and speak properly, they are often very lonely as they are kept apart from society.

“They don’t integrate with friends easily, because some of their friends laugh at them,” Macherbe said.

“Other parents do not want them to play with friends because of their condition.”

He said it was a huge privilege for him to come and see the lives of the children change.

Macherbe was part of the fund-raising team that came up with enough money for the Mount Frere operations.

“That is the most wonderful gift to me: To be able to give back,” he said while playing with one of the children, Michelle Abrahams, who came all the way from Krugersdorp in Gauteng for the operation.

The eight-year-old girl’s deformity had caused her father to take her out of school because the children had teased and laughed at her.

“Some of the children grow up in very isolated environments and a simple operation changes their lives forever,” Macherbe said. “It gives them the chance to smile for the first time.”

Eighteen-month-old Olwethu Ntsiyana’s mother, Nobuhle, could not hold back the tears when her child came out of the theatre.

“Thank you doctor,” she said. “Thank you very much.”