The little boy’abandoned just days before’clung to Kathleen Kerr at a home for children nobody wanted.
No one at the orphanage knew where the child came from, or how old he was. The little boy didn’t even have a name.
But before the day was out, the little boy would eat pizza, maybe for the first time, on a Scooby Doo party plate. He would taste chocolate mousse birthday cake, in honor of 8-year-old orphan twins, and he would drink pop.
Best of all, before the day was out, the boy would have something he could keep forever.
‘We gave him a name,? said Maureen Tippon, Kathleen’s mom. ‘We named him John Palmer, after a guy who goes on our mission trip every year.?
The mother and daughter were back in their Clarkston home Thursday, after a 9-day trip to the Dominican Republic to provide medical care for people able to pay only in smiles and hugs and words of Spanish-spoken gratitude.
And that is enough.
Each winter, a group of volunteers assembled by the Midwest Medical Mission in Toledo travels to the Latin American country located on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, bordering Haiti.
This year, the 13th trip for Tippon, a registered nurse and professor of nursing at the University of Michigan in Flint, and her younger daughter, made the trip with 35 doctors, nurses, technicians and translators.
On years 11 and 12, Tippon’s daughter Anna Kerr, now a 19-year-old Northern Michigan University sophomore, went with her mother.
This year, it was Kathleen’s turn.
‘I had no idea what to expect,? said Clarkston High School junior Kathleen Kerr, 16. ‘I saw a lot of things I wouldn’t have seen here, ever.?
Kerr, who belongs to the National Honor Society, describes a culture of people who go without the niceties and so-called necessities Americans take for granted, people who will stand in line all day for over-the-counter pain medicine and still find a way to smile.
‘They are very appreciative and just generally happy,? she said. ‘A lot of people will come in and they’re not sick, they just want to get medicine to have later. They can’t just buy Tylenol and stuff like we can.?
Supplies to give away during the trip came from a community effort. Kerr took up a drive at CHS and collected more than 200 toothbrushes.
Paul Coglin, owner of Runnin Gear on Dixie Highway, sent over more than 50 pairs of shoes.
And the Clarkston Riverdawgs, a travel baseball team, gave mitts, balls, hats, bats, and batting helmets, a big hit at the orphanage. The list goes on.
The group from Midwest Medical Mission assembled into two teams when they arrived in the Dominican Republic: the first a surgical team for procedures like hysterectomies, hernias, and thyroid surgery’because the country does not have iodized salt, many suffer from an enlarged thyroid, also known as goiter, which can cause a baseball-size lump in the throat.
Uterine cysts and other female problems are also common.
‘They have a lot of child bearing-type problems,? said Tippon, ‘because they have a lot of children.?
The second team, a clinical unit Tippon and Kerr worked with, set up in a hospital laundry room to treat issues like parasites, skin infections, fungus, repertory ailments and diarrhea diseases caused by unclean water.
‘The hospital is not in greatest condition,? said Tippon. ‘So we bring every thing we need for the week, set up the teams and just try to reach as many people as we can.?
It’s old-fashioned word of mouth that brings people from their homes’many live in huts’to line up early in the morning with hospital-issued homemade tickets that determine their place in the long line.
‘It’s so hot there,? said Tippon. ‘It was so unbearably hot this year. You just move in slow motion.?
Kerr helped with general duties around the clinic, found the medicines her mom needed at any given time, gave children their anti-parasitic medication and translated for anyone who needed it.
‘I’m pretty good at speaking in Spanish,? she said, noting that it was definitely more difficult than her high school language classes had her prepared for. ‘Down there they have accents and they slur the words and talk so fast, so it’s pretty hard to understand. But you hear the same medical words over and over, so as the week went on it got better.?
In the weeks before they arrived, other Midwest Medical volunteer teams with different specialties visited the town.
An ear-nose-and-throat specialist performed a number of tonsillectomies the week before, so the kids came back and Tippon checked to make sure everything was healing properly.
‘We are the last team to go,? she said. ‘So we have to be careful about what we do. We can’t leave something behind that’s going to get infected or need follow-up.?
But it wasn’t all work. After an eight or 10-hour day, the two made time to spend on the beautiful beach close to their hotel’and again, a sense of humor over the word ‘hotel.?
Kerr, a vegetarian, survived on pineapple, rice, broccoli and bread.
‘The food is pretty bad,? said Tippon. ‘The people are nice though, so you can’t be the ugly American. You just have to adapt and have a sense of humor about it.?
At the end of the week, on their one free day, Tippon, Kerr, and several other members of the team traveled to an orphanage they discovered three years ago while looking for a recipient for leftover supplies.
It was there, this year, they found the little boy without a name.
The orphanage houses 13 children between the ages of 2 and 11, and had run out of cooking fuel. A woman was making porridge on a fire in the yard.
‘Believe it or not there’s a Dominos Pizza nearby,? said Tippon. ‘It’s a chaotic country; you have people living in huts then you have a Domino’s Pizza. It looks completely out of place.?
But the kids had pizza and cake, and the abandoned 2-year old got his name.
‘We named him John Palmer after a guy who goes on our mission trip every year,? said Tippon. ‘He has some health problems and this may be his last trip so we decided we were going to name the little boy after him so John Palmer could live on in the Dominican Republic.?
Eventually, little John Palmer had to be set on his own little feet. It was time to go home.
Coming back home was a relief in ways, but difficult, as well.
Returning to the normal American teenage life gave Kerr a new perspective.
‘It was really weird going back to school,? she said. ‘I heard all the high school drama stuff, and compared to the bigger picture of what I saw, it all seemed really miniscule and stupid.?
For Tippon, it’s the same every year.
‘You’re working at such an extreme intense level while you’re there, you’ve got all this adrenaline,? said Tippon. ‘But then I come home and??
She thinks of it as the Dominican Blues.
‘I just need to find some quiet time to think about what really happened,? she said. ‘It’s overwhelming. You come home and its almost like experiencing a grieving process’there’s a sense of loss when it’s done.?
Kerr plans to make the trip every year, as long as she is physically able ? and as an avid marathon runner, it could be quite a while, yet. After that, she hopes one or both daughters will continue to carry the torch.
‘It’s hard to describe what I learned in words,? said Kerr. ‘People would say ‘how was your trip?? but it’s hard to say something in such a brief amount of time. There were so many different feelings involved.?
‘It’s almost like its in your soul,? said Tippon. ‘And it’s hard to express what’s in your soul. It’s just part of you.?