Florida Catholic | Dental Missionaries Share Talents

Dental missionaries share talents with Latin Americans

For 18 years, Dr. Art Krzeminski and a group of dental volunteers have been providing free services to citizens in various Latin American countries.

AMY FERRARA SMITH | FLORIDA CATHOLIC STAFF

Published: 02.29.08

Children as young as 3 walk from their families’ farms in the Panamanian countryside to the town where the “gringo” dentists will clean their teeth for free. Some travel for four hours barefoot, and even more make the journey without food or water. When they arrive, Dr. Art Krzeminski of Pensacola and his team of volunteer dentists, hygienists and assistants first satisfy the patients’ hunger and then tell them to open wide.

For 18 years, Krzeminski and a group of dental volunteers have been providing free services to citizens in various Latin American countries. On this most recent trip in January, they flew to Panama City, Panama. From there, they traveled by bus for four hours to Chitré, where they checked into a hotel. To set up the clinic, however, they rode the bus more than an hour west to the small town of Ocú.

“When you treat these poor farmers and kids, you’re looking into the face of Jesus,” said Krzeminski, a member of St. Paul Parish in Pensacola.

Krzeminski’s involvement with the mission group began in 1991 when he worked as an endodontist in Baltimore. He had been reading a book about Costa Rica one day between seeing patients in his office. A young dentist noticed the title and announced that she planned to travel soon to Costa Rica on a dental mission with a Methodist church, even though she was Jewish. Krzeminski followed her lead and signed on, too, with the Volunteers in Mission of the United Methodist Church.

The following year, the Methodist pastor scheduled a meeting to plan another mission trip to Latin America. Krzeminski was the only one who attended. The minister saw it as a sign.

“God chose you to lead the dental group,” he told Krzeminski.

And so he did. Now each year, Krzeminski — who moved to Pensacola in retirement four years ago — brings together Presbyterians, Baptists, Lutherans, Catholics, Jews, Muslims and Buddhists to share their skills with those in need in Latin America.

“We go to do what we’re trained to do,” he said.

This year, 33 people participated in the dental mission trip to Panama and all paid $1,200 to take part. Sometimes, said Krzeminski, a dentist will fund his/her hygienist to make the trip, or a church will fund its parishioners.

“We were fortunate enough to be born in North America,” said Krzeminski. “God gave me a talent. … I have to give back to the community.”

Retired because of arthritic fingers, the 79-year-old works as the triage dentist on these mission trips, screening patients to find out what type of care they need. His fingers are too bent to use dental tools. Yet, there to help him on this trip to Panama were his daughter, Julie Krzeminski, and his wife, Pat.

“It’s not only a challenge, but it’s so fulfilling and exhausting,” said Pat Krzeminski. “At the end of the day, it’s rewarding to have helped families and children.”

Because the planning stages of the trip can sometimes be too stressful for her father, Julie Krzeminski offered to oversee the finances. According to her father, she has also become a successful recruiter. When she joined the group eight years ago, she was the only person from Atlanta. Now, he said, more than half their team is from that area.

In a single day during its visit in Panama, the mission group saw 800 to 1,200 patients at its temporary location in a local primary school. January and February, according to Krzeminski, are the schools’ vacation, equivalent to U.S. schools’ summer vacations. Because the schools are empty then, both space and patients are available. In this place, the mission group set up lawn chairs for the examinations. Many of the patients who walked for four hours to receive dental care had left their dirt-floor houses at 4 a.m. After team members fed them and treated their teeth, they sent them on their return journey with a boxed lunch.

“We do as much as we can,” said Krzeminski. “We treat what hurts.”

He has learned that in countries where sugar cane grows in abundance, mothers often use it as pacifiers. The sugar eventually causes tooth decay.

“There may be one toothbrush for the whole family,” he added.

Colgate Palmolive, however, has helped to alleviate this problem. On a previous trip to Costa Rica, the factory supplied 1,000 dental kits from its San José location. Patients went home with toothbrushes, toothpaste and instructions written in Spanish on how to properly clean their teeth.

While the missionaries cared for Panamanians, Activo 20-30 International of Chitré (a service organization similar to Rotary International or Kiwanis) looked after the group. Members provided translations when necessary, a farewell dinner and collared shirts with the missionaries’ names embroidered. In the past, they have organized an evening of folk dancing with the local children.

“It’s made up of men ages 20 to 39. They’re professionals. Their goal is to look out for the welfare of the children (in Latin America),” said Krzeminski.

During a previous mission trip to Panama, the group needed worksites. A local dentist offered two of his offices. He then told his patients that U.S. dentists would be available to perform procedures for free. He was aware, he told Krzeminski, that many of them couldn’t really afford to pay him for service anyway. When the group left, the dentist’s wife gave Krzeminski a gold cross that had been blessed by Pope John Paul II. He now wears it around his neck.

“We could not accomplish the mission without ground support,” he said.

Krzeminski spoke about Mary Ella Mayne, a flight attendant he met while flying to El Salvador for another mission trip. Mayne joined the group the following year for a trip to Costa Rica. She later suggested the missioners go to Panama, her native country, to serve the poor. When Krzeminski said he would need “ground support” there, Mayne suggested he call her father, who happened to be Panama’s ambassador to the Vatican, as well as her uncle, the minister of health for the country. And so the group expanded its mission to Panama.

Baltimore dentist Dr. Michael Luzuriaga has been on nearly all of the dental mission trips with Krzeminski. According to Krzeminski, Luzuriaga is the mechanical guru of the operation, fastening together donated equipment to make temporary dental work stations.

“He purchases all of the bits and pieces of dental units and puts them together. And they work,” said Krzeminski. He continued to explain that Luzuriaga improvises to make the needed tools. For suction units, he used Sears Shop-Vacs, which he continued to reduce in diameter to reach the appropriate size. For the dental units’ water supply, he used soda bottles.

Once a trip is over, Luzuriaga stores the equipment in the basement of his office building. Sometime during the summer, said Krzeminski, he “revitalizes it” with the proper maintenance and cleaning. When it’s time to travel again for the next mission trip, he takes on the daunting task of arranging to fly with the equipment.

Luzuriaga’s modesty about his contribution is in keeping with his work as a missionary.

“I just try to replicate the best way an average dentist works in an office,” he said.

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