Dana L. Yeoman, DDS

Dentures and Implants

The Power of a Smile to Transcend Borders Part 18

When Soviet money was withdrawn from Ukraine in 1991, the country began to stagger along in survival mode.  The Ukrainians were glad to have cultural independence from the Russians, but suddenly had to face a number of economic problems on their own.  In fact, one of their governors reported that the tax system was completely arbitrary and there was no significant middle class to pay it anyway.  

In order to maintain structure as a country, some things had to be financially overlooked.  Where it was most painfully visible was the lack of funding to orphanages and the loss of pension plans for the elderly.  The equivalent to our social security went up in smoke for the people who had worked all their lives under the illusion that the government would help them in their old age. 

Orphanages were dependent on donations and while we were doing what we could to provide dental care for the children within our reach, we couldn’t help but notice the little old ladies loitering in the subways and on street corners, selling flowers or bread.  Late into the night, these ladies, bundled in layers of clothes, stood by a metro stairway or escalator offering wilting bouquets of home-grown daisies.

It dawned on me that these women had lost their pensions, but worse had probably lost their husbands, too. Their survival depended on someone’s whim to buy flowers.  They sold posies for pennies.  My heart began to break.  How would I like my own grandmother to stand in a subway at 10:30 at night?  Worse than that, how would I like it if she was having to earn enough money for tomorrow’s meal selling flowers that obviously came out of an abandoned back lot in the city?  

That’s when I started buying flowers.  Lots of flowers.  I collected huge bouquets, stopping only to puff a bug off the center of one now and then.  I would pay these ladies for flowers I didn’t really need just so they could go home for the night.  At first my American companions thought I was being sweet, giving flowers to each of them as gifts.  When they realized why I was buying them, they caught the flower mania too.  Before long, our cook at the orphanage was mortified to discover her entire kitchen and dining room inundated with a rainbow of botanical specimens.  Every spare water glass, jar, pitcher, and coffee mug had been commandeered, and every last spare corner was billowing with color.  Trying to mollify the severely irritated cook, we explained that we were trying to brighten her kitchen as thanks for her good cooking.  She softened a little, making a clucking noise that sounded like a disgruntled hen, and went back to her business.  

From this experience, we began a new ministry.  It started small with colorful makeup bags filled with mini soaps, lotion, perfume samples, lip balm, candy, a few coins, bobby pins and other travel-sized personal items.  The amazing thing is that it didn’t seem to matter to these ladies what was actually in the purse.  When they realized someone was stopping on their behalf, to pay attention to them, to show a moment of caring for them, to be concerned on their behalf, they would cry.  These women had felt so alone, being ignored by hordes of people passing them by on their way to the subways, desperate for help, but even more desperate for some expression of love.  Watching grandmas break down in tears was more heart breaking than just about anything else I witnessed in Ukraine.

Since that time, Smile Alliance International (my group with whom I travel to Ukraine) created a ministry especially for widows.  Our hearts, having outgrown the makeup bags, now give them warm coats and scarfs for the winter months.  A local Bakersfield lady, Jeannie Cole, was instrumental in getting this started.  Personally identifying with the grief of widows living half way across the globe, she sent a large donation of beautiful coats and scarves to comfort them.  She was our inspiration for propelling this program forward.  She remains my personal inspiration for passing on love and compassion through cultural boundaries from the heart of one woman to another.  

I had thought I had seen everything, but nothing could prepare me for the countryside orphanage that stood beyond the reach of the city of Kiev.