Global Dental Trip

The Next Chapter

2006-02-19T14:09:00.000-08:00

The band of volunteers is still broken up. Sloan is job hunting in Austin, Texas. Justin has a video production job in Oak.City. I (Brett) have recently returned to Maui and am getting back into my usual life here.
Justin has posted some video footage from his documentary on the website http://www.spreadthealoha.com

I have also moved locations to
http://www. spreadthealoha.org

We'll both be building those sites so be sure to check them out. Thanks and Aloha!

Mission Accomplished

2005-12-27T14:54:00.000-08:00

Thanks to everybody that supported us on this awesome journey around the world. We have all gone our separate ways for now. Justin is in Oklahoma City and has already started editing his video footage to get it ready for a documentary about our trip. Sloan is currently on a short vacation in the Caribbean and will soon be moving to Austin, Texas to work in a Dental Practice. I'm (Brett) in Marin County,California and Tahoe for the next few weeks until I go back to Maui. Besides immediate work plans everything else for the year is up in the air. I'm considering doing some more volunteer work if it works out that way.

All three of us are planning on posting a collection of our pictures here on the website. So be sure to check in a few weeks to see what is posted.

Happy Holidays to All

Marshall Islands

2005-12-13T20:45:00.000-08:00

Lasts Days
I has been a great trip and now it's about to come to an end. We've met some wonderful people, made great friends, and seen some amazing places. We look forward to coming home for the Holidays.

Here are some pictures from our last clinic on Santos in the Marshall islands. Please enjoy and feel free to leave comments here on the blog.

Click here to go to Brett's Marshall Island Photo Album.

Back from Santos

2005-12-12T22:20:00.000-08:00

We made it back safely from Santos and are now on Majuro for a short stay. We had a successful clinic and had a good time. The boat ride wasn't as rough as we expected and my Bomine seemed to do the trick. I'll try to post a few pics in the next few days if possible.

Micronesia Pictures

2005-12-08T02:43:00.000-08:00

Half-way through Micronesia and one week till we officially land back in the USA. We are leaving tomorrow on a 20 ft. boat to Santo, a small island inhabitated by about 600 people. The weather isn't the best for boat travel right now so it will probably be a rough ride. I'm already planning on taking both Dramamine and Bomine or at least a double dose of one of them to prevent any kind of motion sickness. The island we are going to is about 30 miles from here or two hours by boat. The people on the island already know that we are coming so there should be a decent turn out over the next couple of days. We are currently on an island called Ebeye which is apparently the most populated piece of land in the world. Also called the projects of Micronesia. It's actually kind of a cool place with lots of hidden little treasures. The last pictures in the slideshow are from tonight at the local basketball court. Please enjoy the pics. Sorry but I'll have to label them when I have more time.

Click here to go to Brett's Photo Album

2005-12-01T19:39:00.000-08:00

Here are some pics I grabbed from the tourism site that I have listed below. These pics give you an idea of how cold and gray Pohnpei can get. It looks like all the of paper work is done and now were going to heading out to a village on the otherside of Pohnpei. The flight to the island didn't work out. They cancelled the flight bc not enough people, being 6, signed up for it. We looked into chartering the flight but it was going to be too expensive plus difficult to schedule. Click on the links below to get some info and see some views of the surrounding area.

http://www.visit-fsm.org/pohnpei/

http://www.visit-fsm.org/pohnpei/gallery.html

Micronesia

2005-11-30T18:29:00.000-08:00

We made it to Micronesia! These islands are spectacular. Imagine Hawaii rewound 50 years with only 20,000 people living there instead of the 1.2 million. It's really much easier if I just post pictures than even try to do this place justice with words. I'll post some as soon as I can. We arrived on the island of Pompei yesterday after spending a couple of days in Truk Lagoon, an area world famous for WWII wreck diving.

Today we met with the Director of the island hospital to get direction and advice on how to set up some dental clinics. He gave us some good ideas and sent us off to the next city to meet with the Secretary of Health for the Federated States of Micronesia. Who is the person that gives permission to volunteers to do health work in the country. Of course, this guy is on some other island so we got bounced around the office till they sent us to meet with the Secretary of Public Health Education. He recommended we make a visit to an isolated island about 28 miles east of here. Considering his dad came from that island we are hoping that he can expedite the process so we can help the people living out there. The flights go there only once a week so we might change our plans around and spend an entire week there. We still don't know how much the flight costs or exactly when it leaves. We were told that it used to fly on Fridays, which would be tomorrow. Basically, we are dealing with red tape and whether they approve it or not, we'll most likely spend the next week pulling teeth on a small island in Micronesia.

I'll try to update when we know what's going on. Everybody is healthy and in good spirits. Until later, Brett

Brett's Cambodia Pics

2005-11-22T01:47:00.000-08:00

We are now in Thailand and will spend our Thanksgiving on Railei Beach. Hopefully we'll be able to find some Turkey somewhere. We spent a total of two weeks in Siem Reap, Cambodia volunteering at the Angkor Children's Hospital. Most of my pictures are from either the outreach clinics or just touring around the temples. We will be leaving for Micronesia in less than a week. We are told the that there is an unbelievable need for dental care there. A sailor I met yesterday who had traveled through that area told me that every house has big 50lb bag of sugar on the kitchen floor that they use to sweeten everything. Sounds like our last clinics might be the most demanding. We've got our system down though. Our team has a become a finely tuned tooth pulling machine. Enjoy the pics. You should be able to just click below and go straight to the slideshow.

http://www.kodakgallery.com/Slideshow.jsp?Uc=8dnvi99r.2dhr8q4v&Uy=yt5mdt&Upost_signin=Slideshow.jsp%3Fmode%3Dfromshare&Ux=0&mode=fromshare&conn_speed=1

Angkor Children's Hospital

2005-11-10T21:24:00.000-08:00

We arrived safetly in Siem Reap, Cambodia about a week ago and have been working at the Angkor Children's Hopital since. We do outreach clinics about every other day in the afternoon. The Cambodians are really great people, very friendly and full of smiles. So far, this has probably been the most relaxing and organized clinic time of our trip. I'll be posting some pictures soon. In the meantime click on this link to see some pictures of the area and the program on the children's hospital website.

http://www.angkorhospital.org

Tanzania Pics

2005-11-06T01:29:00.000-08:00

Click here to see Brett's Tanzania Pics

http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLandingSignin.jsp?Uc=8dnvi99r.4qr05a5b&Uy=-5b71o0&Upost_signin=Slideshow.jsp%3Fmode%3Dfromshare&Ux=0

Link to Brett's Photo Album. Kenya

2005-10-29T09:19:00.000-07:00

More pictures from Africa. Note: You don't need to sign into Ofoto see these pictures. Just click on the first picture and don't even look at the login stuff on the right side. Also if you want to leave a comment on the Blog you don't need to register or anything. Just write something and post. Don't be shy. ;)

We spent 6 wonderful days on the Masai Mara Region of Kenya last week. We were able to pull off three different clinics and still do many safaris. We left with big smiles on our faces and all of our camera memory cards full. We're now in Tanzania exploring around Mt. Kilimanjaro. We're doing a clinic in a town at the base of Mt. Kili on Monday which should be fun. We're told that there are already 25 people signed up. Hope you enjoy the pics.

http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLandingSignin.jsp?Uc=8dnvi99r.b10dite7&Uy=erxxua&Upost_signin=Slideshow.jsp%3Fmode%3Dfromshare&Ux=0

Click here to see some of Justin's pics

2005-10-22T01:59:00.000-07:00

More pics ..just click here and sign onto Justin's Photo Albumhttp://www.imagestation.com/album/pictures.html?id=2118698858&code=18870641&mode=invite&DCMP=isc-email-AlbumInvite

Off to the next village

2005-10-11T04:22:00.000-07:00

It took me 1.5 hours to post these 2 pictures so Ï,m calling it quits. We^re off to our next destination. These at least give you a glimpse of what we^re seeing here. Until later.

Diorbeval, Senegal, West Africa

2005-10-11T02:41:00.000-07:00

Here is Sloan walking with the villagers on our first full day after a welcoming ceremony with boat races and dancing. They remembered him from before and no matter where you were in the village you would hear them say "Sloan..hey...Sloan". Basically whenever any of us walked around the village we would have a small entourage following close by just like you see here. We started to feel as though we had suddenly become famous rockstars.

Senegal

2005-10-11T02:22:00.000-07:00

This was the scene on the river bank as we left the village. We had to access the village via boat bc the recent rain had turned it into an island.

Nombadda from Africa

2005-10-11T02:11:00.000-07:00

We just returned back to Dakar last night from our first village. I'm not having much luck getting pictures uploaded so it might be a while before they are up. We were in a village called Deorbival (spelling?) about 12 hours by bus to the east from Dakar. Later today we will be arriving in a different village south from here. We are having an amazing experience here in Senegal. The med team is a great group of people and we are all having a good time. That is it for now. Back to the pictures.

2005-09-19T17:27:00.000-07:00

This fisherman came walking by our pousada with a nice little catch.
Sloan instructs. The kids were a curious bunch at the Tatajuba school.
I can´t blame them, it was a pretty good view.
Tatajuba´s not a bad place to be a kid.

The photos continue

2005-09-19T17:17:00.000-07:00

We treated about 40 patients at Jose Maria over the two days that we worked there. On the end of the second day we had to give up the classroom and move to the neighbors house.
This shot was taken in the front bedroom of the neighbors house.
This is Justin working on his first tooth.
Oi Dr. Sloan

Here are the promissed pictures.

2005-09-19T17:01:00.000-07:00

This our little buggy that took us wherever we wanted to go including off a couple of large sand dunes.
This is on the first day at the Jose Maria school. Mi casa es su casa at Pasada Santa Maria. Our home for 8 days.
Ahhhhh! Some of the kids were scared of us. Just kidding, well at least of Sloan.

Clinico de Tatajuba

2005-09-18T18:43:00.000-07:00

This is the first school we approached and worked out of in the Tatajuba town area. No drinking fountains on this campus, just a 30ft. deep well.

Back from the Desert

2005-09-14T07:40:00.000-07:00

We´re back from the desert after an amazing week long experience living amongst sand dunes in a tiny town called Tatajuba. It would take a long time give the story due justice so I´m just going to tell the watered down version. On our first day of exploring in our rented dune buggy we passed a very small building which sort of resembled a school in the middle of nowhere. We drove across the sand and jumped out to present them with the translated letter explaining what we were trying to do. The teacher seemed to understand and we explained that we would come back in the morning to treat anybody that needed help. After some sandboarding, a little dune jumping, and a few caparinas at the lagoon; we found our way to the town of Tatajuba where a little oasis called Santa Maria Pasada was waiting for us. We met a Brazilian woman there named Renata that had lived in the US and offered to be our interpreter the next day. Our team was then complete and we were ready for our first clinic. We showed up the next morning and surprisingly found a good ten patients waiting to be seen. On the first day both Justin and I pulled our first teeth with Sloan pulling out a good 20. We continued to run the clinic till we ran out of supplies on the fourth day. The town of Tatajuba couldn´t have had more than 200 people living in it so you can imagine that we quickly met most of the town characters. On Saturday afternoon we were invited to see the town´s children's choir perform at the modest community center. Upon our arrival we were serenaded with a welcoming of guests song followed by a unique version of Start Spreading the News. We were asked to speak to the community and were rewarded with thanks and appreciation from the villagers. They asked us if we could play any instruments which we can´t but I still got up to play the drums. This led to a cool little jam session that had hands clapping and heads bobbing. It was such incredible experience for us to become part of the humble community surrounding Tatajuba. Our planned one day visit quickly turned into a week and in the end we had to search for a reason to leave. We have tons of pictures that need to go up but I don´t think it can happen today. That´s it for now. All is well here in Brazil.

Up the Coast Buggy Style

2005-09-06T06:43:00.000-07:00

Oi!
We´re departing the small beach town of Jericoacoara(Brazil) in our rented buggy today to hit up small and remote coastal towns that will hopefully need dental attention. We have a translated letter explaining what we´re trying to do. Hopefully we´ll be well recieved when we enter the towns. The terrain consists of large sand dunes with scattered oasis´ every once and a while. It should be pretty fun to trek over with the buggy. I personally haven´t seen any dental action yet but Sloan has already pulled a good 300 teeth during his Amazon mission. That´s it for now. The internet is too slow here to attempt uploading pictures so you´ll have to wait a bit longer. Hasta luego. Brett here, signing out.

The bag has arrived!!

2005-09-02T13:31:00.000-07:00

We finally got the bag from the airline with all the teeth pulling goodies. We´ve been enjoying ourselves here for the past three days while we sorted out the missing bag situation. We hung out on the beach today and threw the frisbee around with some local kids. We should be meeting up with Sloan in about two days up north from here. I´ll post some pics and maybe even some audio clips soon.

We made it to Brraaaazilll!!

2005-08-31T17:10:00.000-07:00

Sorry no pictures yet but soon enough. Justin already lost his bag..lol. He left it at customs on the otherside of the country. Whoops. Otherwise all is well, we´ll get the bag hopefully later tonight. It only has all the dental equipment in it. lol It´s actually AA´s fault bc they said the bag was checked all the way through to our last destination. Fortaleza isn´t paradise but we´re just traveling through. The weather is nice and breazy. We met some locals on the beach. One of them invited himself to our table and finished off our leftover fish carcuss, head and all. He hadn´t eaten since yesterday so we were happy to share. Stay tooned for more tales and picures. Until then this is Brett and Justin saying aloha!

note: We haven´t met up with Sloan yet. BTW Sloan, where are you anyways?

The calm before the storm!

2005-08-30T04:11:00.000-07:00

The trip has officially started around the world but I'm still in the States. I've been busy visiting with family and friends for the last four days in Marin, San Francisco, and up in Tahoe. These shots are of Donnor Lake early in the morning. We went for an early morning canoe ride with the fishing poles . We didn't catch any fish but weren't exactly trying too hard. It's now 4 am on Tuesday and I'll need to leave for the airport in about 5 hours. I'd go to sleep but I still haven't finished packing. I think I'll just stay up and sleep on the plane rides down to Brazil.

Some Good Reference Links

2005-08-12T03:55:00.000-07:00

Info on and maps of Kenya
http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/africa/ke.htm

Info on the Marshal Islands
http://worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/oceania/mh.htm

Map of our planned Dental Clinics

2005-08-12T03:52:00.000-07:00

International Medical Relief

2005-06-29T01:33:00.000-07:00

Here are some articles written about IMR.

Sengal,Africa Trip

2005-06-26T17:00:00.000-07:00

Senegal will the second stop on the trip. Check out this link for information on the area