Dental Aid Work – Ditching the Rat Race for a Charitable Cause – IC050

Protrusive Dental Podcast

Have you ever considered Dental Aid Work?

Imagine giving up your morning starbucks and your air conditioned dental surgery to work in a developing country that has just 7 dentists.

Fellow Protruserati, Dr James Hunter and his young family will be doing just this – they are preparing for a four-year mission to Liberia, Africa, to dedicate themselves to dental aid work.

Follow along as we delve into their story of skill, passion, and humanitarianism.

https://youtu.be/lzKVmuuUvBI

Watch IC050 on Youtube

Need to Read it? Check out the Full Episode Transcript below!

Highlights of this Episode:
00:00 Introduction
2:52 From Theology to Dentistry
5:35 Dr. James on Dentistry
06:44 The Decision to Move to Liberia for Aid Work
09:52 Understanding Liberia’s History and Needs
15:28 The Future Plans for Dental Aid in Liberia
18:37 Motivations Behind the Mission
20:04 The Challenge of Committing to Charity Work
20:57 Financial Planning, Schooling and Adaptation for Children Abroad
26:40 Sharing Experiences and Encouraging Aid Work
28:13 Raising Awareness and Support for the Mission
32:09 Closing Thoughts and Encouragement

Be sure to visit https://www.thehuntersinliberia.co.uk/ for details on supporting charity work in Liberia. Additionally, explore other charity websites in your country for more ways to make a difference locally.

This episode is not eligible for CPD/CE points, but never fear, there are hundreds of hours of CPD waiting for you on the Protrusive App!

For the full educational experience, our Ultimate Education Plan gives you access to all our courses, webinars, and exclusive monthly content. This includes Vertipreps for Plonkers and clinical videos demonstrating Onlay Preps.

If you enjoyed this episode, don’t miss out on watching “The International Dental Student – From Ukraine to Egypt to Slovakia – IC047”

Click below for full episode transcript:

Jaz's Introduction: As dentists, we are in a privileged position. I know it's sometimes hard to fathom that and hard to come to terms with that because of all the doom and gloom that we sometimes like to focus on.

Jaz’s Introduction:
But really, we are in a beautiful profession, and we can actually mold our profession how we want to. Now, there might come a time in your life, if you’re that way inclined, to take your career towards dental aid.

This could be at the start, the middle, or even towards the end of your career, which is quite popular, to donate yourself, donate your skills to charity. This could be in a refugee camp, this could be in a third world country, to provide a much needed dental service. So on today’s episode, I’ve got Dr. James Hunter, who, with his family, so him, his two kids, his wife, are moving to Liberia, which is a small country in Africa, and he’s going to be, hopefully, working there for about four years.

That’s his provisional plan, along with his family, providing dental aid, which I just think it’s so so noble. So, what this episode wants to do is basically let you know about the different aid opportunities out there. And actually, just had this interview with James to find out what are his motivations.

How do you get involved with this? But how did you even have that difficult conversation with your spouse, with your children, that you’re going to move to this country in Africa and for the next four years of your life you’re going to leave the rat race? You see, a lot of us would struggle to say, you know what, I’m going to give up the income, I’m going to give up the house, give up the practice, give up the cars and move to a third world country and work for free and just do a beautiful charitable thing, which is exactly what James and his family are doing.

But James and his family are very, very rare individuals. They are gems. They are the gems of this planet. And I want his story to come out and it might inspire you. It might inspire you to maybe take two weeks out of the year to do some dental aid work. It might inspire you to just take the next step and actually start researching about, hmm, at what stage in your career might it be worthwhile and possible for you to give back to the world? Because there’s so many countries where we could help. We could actually give some dental aid. We can actually serve through our skills and our knowledge.

Hello, Protruserati, I’m Jaz Gulati and I’m the host of Protrusive Dental Podcast. If you’re new to the podcast, great to have you here. If you’re a returning listener or watcher, thanks so much for coming back again. This is an Interference Cast. This is a non-clinical arm of the podcast. Got loads of other clinical episodes and CPD and this particular episode is not eligible for CPD, but it’s got lots of gems in there, but I think this will inspire. I think this is one of those episodes which you take away and you become inspired about such good out there in the world and we start focusing on and how you might be able to also contribute to the world and how our skills can benefit the world.

In this instance through a charitable cause. But we are in a privileged profession to be able to help and of course, get people out of pain and cure infections. So let’s listen to James now. Why is he and his family moving to Liberia for four years? Leaving the rat race and doing this beautiful, beautiful thing. Let’s find out.

Main Episode:
James Hunter, welcome to Protrusive Dental Podcast, my friend. How are you?

[James]
Yeah, good. Thank you. Thanks for having me on.

[Jaz]
I’m very excited to unpack your story. I mean, I have a gazillion questions. You don’t even believe that. When I read your proposition, which I’m so excited to tell everyone, I was like, how, like, it’s just brilliant. So just tell us about, like, just go back to the beginning. Tell us about you as a human, as a dentist, and what are the different steps that culminated in you doing this soon, this huge aid work abroad?

[James]
Cool. Yeah. I say, thanks for having me on again. I’ve been listening to you since my foundation training. So I say, I think, you’ve probably had a bigger impact on my dental career so far than my degree did. So yeah, it’s awesome to be on. So studied dentistry in Cardiff. Graduated reasonably recently. I’m 33 but did it as a mature student. So I graduated in 2019. Prior to that, I actually did a degree in theology.

So kind of back at A levels, I was more interested in humanities. So I did Latin maths and ancient history at A level, and then I went to Exeter to do classics. And then I kind of, during the summer, wanted to switch to do half classics, half theology. And then after my first week there, I decided I never wanted to do Latin again.

So, did a three-year degree in theology, which I loved and in first year met my wife. So got engaged at the end of second year. And it was at that point where I was like getting ready for our wedding at the end of third year. And I was like, flip, I need to get a job if I’m going to get married after this.

And it suddenly like dawned on me Theology, like I really enjoyed studied it, but it’s kind of a degree that leads you to apply for kind of grad schemes. And I realized none of those really suited me. I mean.

[Jaz]
That’s a huge transition, isn’t it? That’s a huge transition going from the humanities and theology to dentistry. So yeah, I mean, tell us more about that.

[James]
Well, I think I was really not sure about what I wanted to do and felt like I was dawdling. So I kind of got, tried to get as much work experience as I could in different places. I got a work experience place with my old dentist and absolutely loved it. I just thought, how have I not thought of this as a career?

So I made a really big change and decided to apply for a dentistry degree. So I had to do it with a prelim year. So it ended up, there was only a few uni’s which offered that, but ended up getting into Cardiff. So we got married and moved to Cardiff. I did a year, preliminary year at the beginning. Which I hate to say is, I don’t want to say it’s a waste of time, but it was probably a bit of a waste of time that first year. Like I remember one of my first assignments was doing a prostho project on nudibranchs, those sea slugs.

[Jaz]
Oh, wow.

[James]
So I remember thinking this didn’t feel super relevant to dentistry, but so I did that, absolutely loved dentistry at uni. I really kind of feel like, even though it wasn’t something that was on my radar, kind of through school. I feel like when I started, I just realized it was a really, really perfect fit for me.

[Jaz]
Can I just unpack that? Cause we’re talking while we’re recording, it is in the middle of a stress awareness month. So decisions that we make and where we go into like your perception of what dentistry was.

As a mature student, someone who had a few more years under your belt, had been the real world a bit, and then you did some work experience and you thought, okay, this is cool for you. What is it that gripped you about dentistry at that work experience? What are the things that you saw that, okay, this suits you better than the grad scheme? And then also just tell me, when you became a dentist, did the perception meet the reality?

[James]
So I think the two main things for me were just the variety of patient interaction. I absolutely loved that. I really loved watching that guy for a week and just seeing the variety of patients coming through the doors, interacting with kind of sweet old ladies with their dentures and kids.

And that coupled with, I think just a really, really intricate kind of technical aspects of dentistry. I used to love doing kind of airfix models when I was a kid. And so seeing him kind of working through his loops and doing these kind of fine mechanical things, I thought I’m going to love that.

And yeah, that’s kind of the elements of dentistry I really enjoyed throughout my degree. And then I think now working in general practice, that’s definitely the element I love. Yeah. In my happy place is kind of working on a tooth under rubber dam, just little fine things. And then, yeah, just getting to know patients. Like I’ve been working at the same practice for about three and a bit years now. And it’s just really lovely kind of seeing the same patients in the now getting a relationship with them.

[Jaz]
So, but you’re leaving them all now.

[James]
I would say the thing which put me onto it the first bit. Yes. Yeah.

[Jaz]
So tell us about this huge, I mean, so it’s basically like, probably in the intro would have already spilled the beans about you moving to Liberia with your family, right?

[James]
Yeah.

[Jaz]
So just tell us about how this came to fruition.

[James]
So I guess short term and long term. So like long term my wife and I had always, since we first met, we’d like the idea of going and doing aid work in some capacity in the future.

[Jaz]
And your wife is, what kind of industry is she in?

[James]
So she’s been a stay-at-home mum for the last five years. So she did the theology degree. After that, she did a master’s and then worked for a charity. So she’s non-medical.

[Jaz]
But the relevance there is that she already had this, she already worked for a charity. She had that sort of inner desire to help and very charitable values already embodied within her.

[James]
Exactly. Yeah. So I’d say it was kind of a mutual thing that we’d both wanted to do that in some capacity. And then, making the change to do dentistry, suddenly it gave me something tangible and practical to use. Right at the very beginning when I was kind of applying for the dental degree, it was timing that in that summer after my theology degree ended, I went out to Sierra Leone for a few weeks to visit some friends who were doing kind of kids aid work in a charity in Crewe Bay in Sierra Leone, and I saw there was a local dental practitioner in the hospital there.

So I went and saw him for a day right at the very beginning. And I think even just spending a day with him in this clinic in Sierra Leone, kind of stuck in my mind as, okay, I think this is something which we should work towards. It was kind of all through the back of our mind during like the dental degree.

So actually we’ve got a five year old boy and a three year old girl. And we had my son at the end of fourth year. So kind of had him, had a kind of a new baby also fifth year. And it meant that wasn’t the ideal time. It’s funny. It’s a mix. It was tough in some respects, but it was also so lovely.

You know, the hours at uni, although you’ve got a lot of tough study, quite flexible. So, I remember kind of walking around the park in Cardiff with him strapped onto me with my flashcards, like revising, which, was lovely in some aspects, but so we kind of, I did my finished my degree then had my foundation training in Cardiff and yeah, we kind of looked into doing maybe the kind of an aid work move straight off the foundation training, but then COVID hit.

Bang through the middle of it. So that put a bit of a halt on everything there. So we kind of just into the back of our mind and then we can kind of get onto the way we heard about it. Like, so all through the dental degree, I’ve been part of the Christian Dental Fellowship and they’ve got a kind of a quarterly newsletter, which they kind of go through.

They’ve got a few kind of mission work aid work partners around the world. So they were kind of talking about different things which they were doing. So I think that again, kind of put us onto that as something in our mind to go do, and basically now our kids are five and three. We both earlier last year felt that now was maybe the time when they’re young prior to being more established at school. And so, yeah, we’ve been kind of pushing that door for the last almost 12 months now.

[Jaz]
Amazing. So your five year old is in on it. He, is it he or she?

[James]
Yeah, they’re all in on it. Yeah. He, yeah, Max.

[Jaz]
Max knows. Max knows and he’s come to terms and he’s looking forward to it kind of thing. You brainwashed him enough. Yeah?

[James]
Yeah, absolutely. Selling it to him, yeah, selling it to him so he can go, yeah, hunting crabs on the beach and stuff like that.

[Jaz]
Very cool. Well, why Liberia and where is, for those who may not be geographically gifted, where is Liberia in the world and what is the current situation? Why do they need aid work?

[James]
Okay. So Liberia is a relatively small country in West Africa. It’s about half the size of the UK in terms of size. And it’s got a population of just over 5 million. It’s bordered by the Atlantic Ocean, Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Ivory Coast. It’s in that kind of area of Africa. Yeah. I mean, the reason we’ve ended up choosing there is that through that Christian Dental Fellowship magazine.

We heard about an organization called SIM, which is kind of like a Christian organization, which has lots of different things. They do kind of disaster relief, sports, teaching, Bible translating, and lots of medical stuff. And so they’ve got kind of dental outreach things all over the world. And they’re kind of set up for longer term stuff.

And so we just sent off an application to them and just said, we would be interested in kind of hearing about what the options are and, I think that, big takeaway is that there are a lot of opportunities for dentists to do aid work. We are really needed all over the world. And so we got sent Madagascar, Peru, Paraguay, Senegal.

Yeah. Lots of different places, but one of them was Liberia. We found the dentist who’s currently the lead dentist of the clinic we’d be going to a YouTube presentation about his work out there. Although maybe a Africa wasn’t our first choice from kind of a top destination to go to. I think, you know, we got off at some places which were basically like Madagascar would be really cool to go to, but just hearing about this guy’s work was really amazing.

I don’t know. I can talk a bit about the, kind of the, I think the context of the recent history of Liberia is quite useful to set up maybe kind of why and what they’re doing. Yeah. Liberia is basically a country where it’s super tough. recent history. They got a new country. It was set up like at the, basically the early 19th century as an outpost for freed slaves from America to go back to Africa.

[Jaz]
Hence the name Liberia, freedom, liberate.

[James]
Exactly. And even like the Liberian flag is kind of like a single starred version of the United States flag. I don’t think it was ever officially a colony, but it was kind of originally established as that. And so over the course of about 25 years, 4, 000 or so freed slaves from America moved to Liberia.

Only about 1800 people survived just from the harsh conditions and tropical diseases, but it eventually achieved independence in 1847. And after that, basically the. America Liberians, who’d been these free slaves, they kind of ruled or were in charge more or less socially and politically of the country.

And that led to quite a lot of tension that eventually kind of bubbled up and led to a violent military coup in 1980. And so the America Liberian president was killed. And the first indigenous Liberian president kind of established control as the new president, his government was kind of overrun with nepotism and corruption.

And there was persecution of rival tribes. And that led to then a really brutal seven year civil war from 1989 to ‘ 97. During that period, about 200, 000 people were killed and hundreds of thousands of Liberians were kind of had to flee as refugees. There was a tentative two year piece at the end of that.

The guy who came It was in control after this guy called Charles Taylor, I think he campaigned on the slogan. He killed my ma. He killed my pa. We will vote for him. So it was kind of a tentative piece for a couple of years. And then that spilled over into a second four year civil war in 1999. And that led to almost a quarter of a million people being killed and almost a million people being displaced into neighboring countries. So it’s had a, like in recent history, a really devastating history that’s left the whole country kind of in a really-

[Jaz]
Well James, thanks for educating us. But like how is how is it now? Is it are you scared not just generally because the change but regarding the political stability and that kind of stuff Is there a fear element there?

[James]
I don’t think so now. Yeah, which is really good. So since that finished since that civil war finished in 2003, they’ve had kind of fair and free elections, most recently Former president was George Weah, who was former FIFA footballer of the year. He spoke at AC Milan and he recently lost and there was a peaceful transition.

So I think that the takeaway is that it’s a country with a hard past, but it’s, it’s like rebuilding itself. And the thing that’s hard is that in the backdrop of all this, a lot of the infrastructure for medical stuff was destroyed. And so on the organization that we’re moving with, they established a radio station prior to the war and then hospital.

A lot of that was just destroyed. It was rebuilt after the civil war. And in 2008, the mercy ships were in Freetown. So not in Freetown, in Monrovia. And two dental clinicians felt that there was a real need for a land-based facility for dental care in Liberia. So it was nothing like that at the time.

So they established a dental clinic in the hospital on the compound that we’re going to be moving to. That was kind of originally manned by kind of a mixture of expats and Liberians. But most recently in 2017, the guy who’s currently running it, there’s this guy called Simon Stretton-Downes, OBE, which I’ll mention, so don’t tell me off otherwise.

But, he moved there. It was going to be run by a couple of Liberian clinicians who weren’t dentists but had kind of some informal training and they were doing things like extractions and fillings and cool stuff like jaw wiring after motorcycle accidents. They taught Simon how to do that. And so he turned up. And. he’s kind of transitioned the clinic into a new phase, which I could talk about unless you want to, you want to jump in. I’m talking.

[Jaz]
I have a million questions. Cause I think what you’re doing is so noble, so brilliant, but just tell us about just some facts. Like you’re doing this project. You’ve got like this, you had some time, think about it. You’ve had time with the family to make a position. What is the plan? Like when are you going? And when do you envisage you’ll be done? Is there a tentative end date where you think, okay, we’re going to come back to the UK. Like what are your rough plans?

Obviously, life throws things at you and you may change and you make decisions dynamically. But what’s your rough plan?

[James]
So our rough plan is to move out there January 25. The reason why we’re kind of hoping to go with that period of time is that the guy who’s running it at the moment is in his kind of mid 60s and he’s due to retire.

They’ve kind of had a, I think, seven years there and they said that they were going to stay until the dentist who was originally there, or the guy who was originally when they arrived, they put him through dental school in Nairobi, waiting for him to graduate. And so he’s graduating hopefully beginning of next year.

And then they are looking to retire in the middle of the year. And so they’ve got a team of four expat dentists at the moment, the main guy, Simon, Lady Melvina, who works there a couple of days a week. And then two dentists who arrived last year from India called, Renju and Serin. But all of them, apart from Melvina, got kind of maybe a bit of uncertainty about how long they’re going to be staying there.

So it’s in this transition period. So we’re hoping to try and arrive and fill that gap. One of the things that’s amazing about what Simon’s done is he’s kind of worked on the clinic. To expand that, there’s a team of about 40 now, about 20 clinical, one Liberian dentists, three more who are due to kind of qualify in the next few years.

What’s really cool is that he’s established the first kind of dental training facility in Liberia. So he started something called the Liberian Dental Therapy School. And the aim is for that to be a really sustainable, ongoing positive impact for the dental care in Liberia, because they have no dental school, no training.

They’re really relying on people training externally and coming in or expect dentists coming in. Whereas with this plan, they’re training hopefully seven therapists a year. The aim is 70 over the next 10 years to basically receiver degree is being credited by Peninsula Dental School and there’s a university in Liberia who are kind of awarding it.

And the aim is that they’ll learn how to do basic dentistry that they can carry out with DentAid field kits, which are being kind of donated to the graduates. And then they’ll go back to their counties. At the moment, only kind of a small area of Liberia has any kind of dental care. And so we’re kind of going to be there probably for the first stint about we’re aiming for a four year initial period, the organization, which we’re going with want us, they kind of want us to come back at two years and reassess, which we will do. But the guy, Simon, he was kind of more or less saying, look, I’d mentally prepare for four because your first year is going to fly by.

Just at year two, you’ll probably feel like you’re getting your feet under the table. And then all of a sudden you’ll be leaving. So the aim is January 25 for about four years. We’re kind of mentally preparing for.

[Jaz]
When you think about when we were entering dental school and then people had different motivations in life, right? People had, I’ll be honest, lots of friends will say, openly say, or secretly say to me, you know what? I kind of Googled high paying jobs. I saw a dentist and I went into dentistry for that reason. A lot of colleagues will say that. A lot of colleagues also say, oh yeah, I like my work experience or I had braces and therefore I like the positive impact it gave me.

I like the cosmetic side, whatever. You’ve sort of described about your journey in dentistry, but what I want to know now is, what is your prime motivator in doing this amazing thing in Liberia to help a nation, help a community, help with such a huge task, healthcare related? What are yours and your family’s motivation over the next four years to contribute to this?

[James]
Yeah. So I heard you on the dental masters podcast once say, don’t talk about politics or religion, but-

[Jaz]
Go for it. I’ll make an exception.

[James]
Yeah. My wife and I are both strong Christians. And so I think even when we first met. Wanting to, to go do some kind of aid work in some capacity was really on our hearts, ultimately as a Christian, I think I have one life and I want to use it well to do the work that I feel God has installed for me.

And I’m not saying that I decided to do dentistry for purely altruistic reasons or anything like that. I thought it was a career that really suited me, and I really love it. But I think just at this period, it works really well for our family, for this to be a period where we explore going to do this and it’s been on our hearts and minds for a number of years now, and my wife and I both felt that kind of tug kind of grow last year. And so yeah, ultimately I would say that-

[Jaz]
The Christian values is to fulfill those Christian values, isn’t it really?

[James]
Yeah.

[Jaz]
Yeah. Very good. I mean, what I’m thinking is-

[James]
I give an account from my works.

[Jaz]
Yes, absolutely. Well, I think a lot of co colleagues, if you said to them that, okay, drop everything you’re doing, drop your practice, drop your Invisalign, drop your tools, and do some charity work, four years, it sounds like a great thing to do.

Obviously it sounds wonderful. But to actually commit to that is a huge deal because what happens is we enter the rat race, we enter the rat race, we get a mortgage. We think, okay, keeping up with the Joneses, get a two bedroom house, get a three bedroom house, expand, get a practice, get a second practice.

The whole thing about possession, the material, you enter the rat race. And that’s one of the reasons why me and my wife went to Singapore when we did, because we hadn’t entered the rat race. We were just fresh out from hospital. And we thought, okay, if we get a mortgage now, we’ll enter the rat race and we’ll never get to travel kind of thing.

And so we did that. We worked in Singapore privately, which is great. And we also traveled, which is great. What you’re doing here is like, wow. Like it’s altruism, but it’s also this scratching an itch of doing something that is a really once in a lifetime, like amazing thing that you’re gearing up to do.

But do you have any doubts about leaving the rat race and your financial future for your kids? And also, I also want to just talk about schooling and what the schooling situation will be like, and what have you got for the future? I’m just very interested in thinking about the kind of doubts average dentist would have about dropping everything four years.

[James]
Yeah, I mean, I 100 percent agree with that. One of the things my wife and I always said was that we would like it ideally to kind of coincide with a transition period in my job. I’ve been really fortunate. I straight out of foundation training year, got a job at a really lovely practice that I love working at.

It’s basically private. So I’ve been able to go straight into kind of doing dentistry to the standard I really wanted to be able to do it to. It’s 10 minute drive from my house. So it’s by the beach. So it feels like it was. Kind of a bit of a mad decision to blow up what such is a lovely setup, but my practice principal is kind of getting to the stage where he’s maybe looking to retire and I think it’s probably going to coincide maybe reasonably nicely as a transitional period where maybe I would be having to look for different work anyway, and you’re right.

It kind of, that decision you were saying about yourself, I kind of figure if actually, if we don’t do it now, if I stop handing my CVs out elsewhere and get established in a new practice, then all of a sudden my kid’s going to be older and it’s going to be harder to do. But yeah, definitely have doubts. I hope that it all goes really smoothly.

[Jaz]
And we all do. We are all on your side.

[James]
Oh, thanks man. We’re fortunate as dentists in that we do have a really well paying job. And so I think that takes a little bit of, not the stress off, but-

[Jaz]
Anxiety, maybe like financial anxiety.

[James]
It’s going to be four years. Yeah. So I think, we’ve been able to save up money to put towards this. We’re fortunate that we own our house. We’ve got a mortgage, but we own it. And there’s probably a bit of peace of mind that comes from knowing that, okay, four years.

Maybe we’re not earning, I could have been earning in the UK or anything, but hopefully I’m going to be able to come back with maybe even more increased skills and walk into a job that’s really well paid again. And I’ll have maybe had a bit less for my retirement, but it’s not going to be the difference between my family kind of not having, roof over their head. So, we’re fortunate in that position as dentists.

[Jaz]
I mean, in the four years, you’re not wealth building in these four years that are coming, but what you are building is, I’m just amazed, I’m just imagining you there now and the quality time that you get to spend with your children and what you get to teach them about the world.

That whole, all the learning experiences. So tell me about just schooling. Like, are you going to be homeschooling? Is there a school? I mean, obviously you’re doing better both obviously as well. What do you got in mind regarding schooling?

[James]
I think if homeschooling was on the table, my wife would a hundred percent not go. Like my boy is really busy. So there’s a small kind of co op led school. So the place we’re going it’s kind of a campus compound just outside Monrovia. It’s got a hospital, it’s got a radio station, dental school. And then it’s got a small school for the workers who are kind of working within the hospital.

It’s a little bit unsure as to whether or not, or how that’s going to work yet. There was a little bit of uncertainty with the teachers just because people come and go, but yeah, basically they’re going to be going through an accredited US style schooling system. So we went and looked at it. It was really sweet, kind of multi year, just all groups, 18 different nationalities, all in the school of kind of 50 kids, maybe it was even less than that.

But so yeah, my boy will be kind of jumping in there. My little girl, I think will be at the beginning a bit young for it. So I think she’s in the kind of a more of a preschool sort of age. Yeah, it’s mixed for the kids. I know they’re going to be homesick within some capacity. We’re taking them away from a really lovely place.

I live in Cornwall by the beach and my kids just love being in the sea. One of the things that’s really amazing is that the campus is literally just on the Atlantic ocean. So the little bungalow we’ll be in a stone’s throw from the beach. So I’m kind of selling it to my son that he can catch crabs and boogie board, every day after school.

And they’ve got, it’s going to be exciting for them. And I think they’re at an age where I think when we went there, all of the kids who were younger were having an absolute blast. And then there were a couple of teenagers who were maybe having a bit less fun because the people who they’d grown up with had left and they are maybe missing out on maybe the more teenage sort of age.

But my son’s five, he’ll be six when we go and we’ll come back when he’s 10. I imagine he’ll have a blast and it’s nice, like you say, spending quality time with them. My little boy will be able to just bicycle up the road to the clinic I’m working at and come hold my mirror if I’m taking out teeth and stuff like that. He can be part of that.

[Jaz]
Absolutely phenomenal. It reminds me of Alicia yesterday. I saw a patient, lovely lady, and she was telling me how she went to Argentina just last Christmas. I was seeing her the next checkup, so before the last checkup and this checkup, she went to Argentina for Christmas.

I said, why did you go to Argentina? And she told me, okay, her son actually was meeting her there, and her son lives in Costa Rica. And she’s telling me that her son is, he tried the whole corporate route and stuff and it just wasn’t for him. And so what he does now is he’s like, I don’t even want to say a deep sea diver.

He’s some sort of a, he works in the water and he basically saves turtles and tortoises, like an orphanage looks after them, right? And she said to me, look, he, all he owns is a rucksack. That’s all he owns, right? But he’s found a life partner. He’s got his rucksack and he goes from place to place in Costa Rica, saving these turtles, right?

And he’s happy. Right? And I thought that is the ultimate liberation. That’s living life on your terms, doing what you want to do, exploring the beauty and nature of life. I’m not comparing what you’re doing to what he’s doing. They’re still very different. But what I’m trying to say, I’m trying to just highlight the fact that you are living life on your terms, James.

You decided, you and your wife have decided, and your family decided to do something absolutely epic. I wish you and your family all the success. And success, I measure as a number of people that you’ll be able to help. The number of experiences and memories that you’ll be able to make, that for me will be success. So what I would love for you to do, James, is, are you on Protrusive Guidance?

[James]
Yeah.

[Jaz]
I want you, if you can, when you get the chance, every month, just put a photo. How was your month? A little blog. We would love that. Honestly. And like, if you want to put like a GoFundMe link there, we would love to support it.

Just, just keep posting us. We want to support our community. So I would absolutely love to see some photos of your son in the beach with the crabs or some of the patients able to help or just the Atlantic ocean from you and your bungalow. It would be absolutely brilliant to keep the story going to give us a flavor of this. Would you be up for doing that?

[James]
Absolutely. Yeah. I’d appreciate that. And yeah, I’d really, yeah, I’d love to. Yeah I’m going to try and look at a website under progress and try and get some social media around. So yeah, I’d absolutely love to share it with you guys. That’s one of the thing I really want to, I’m so grateful you’re having me on this podcast is that, I really want to get dentists involved and behind me so I can share our difficult clinical experiences.

[Jaz]
And do you think there’s scope for maybe dental students doing an elective with you or dentists come out and spend a couple of weeks to help out? Have you thought about this kind of stuff?

[James]
I have thought about it. Yeah. I’d absolutely love that. I think probably the sort of thing I’d need to work out when we’re there, but yeah, definitely. I’d absolutely love that.

[Jaz]

Please, please think about it. Please sort of set up a program, something to make it easy for dental students or dentists to come and help you out and just get a flavor of this as well. I think that’d be a great thing for your clinic to get some more help, but also for people looking for an experience, looking to actually be altruistic and give back to the greater community of the world, which leads me to my last question is like, obviously, with the magazine that you had and the Christian values and stuff, you found this place.

But what are the other options that dentists have to do aid work? Obviously, we’re in the UK, so we’re talking from a UK perspective, but this could be anywhere in the world. Dentists from America, dentists from New Zealand, wherever. Where can you find aid work to contribute to?

[James]
Yeah. So, I mean, I think, like I said, there’s an abundance really, I think it’s probably helpful to kind of split it up into maybe short term and long term short term is a lot, I think, easier to find because there’s a lot of organizations which are set up for that.

So, in the UK you probably heard Dentaid. There’s another one called Bridge2Aid. There’s one called Work the World, which is for kind of student electives. The Mercy Ships, people have heard of. There’s another one called, World Medical Mission, which is a kind of organization with Samaritan’s Purse who do the shoe boxes and the Doctors Without Borders. But so all those-

[Jaz] There’s also the refugee camp for the displaced refugees in the Greek islands and stuff. There’s lots of great work by Dr. Ola Hassan. They’ve been doing that as well. So you’re right. I think you just have to start looking for it. When you open your eyes, when you open your mind to the opportunities, opportunities start coming to you, right?

[James]
Yeah. I almost feel like you can pick a country, type in that country, dental aid work, and you will find something.

[Jaz]
Let me try this. Las Vegas. No, I’m just kidding. No, no, I mean, I think you’re right. I think there’s so many different ways to do it. What other advice could you give to someone considering aid work?

[James]
So I hope I have more advice when I’m actually out there. Did you do an elective as part of?

[Jaz]
Yeah, I’m so glad you mentioned my elective. Did it in Vietnam. We did it with a charity East meets West, and that was fantastic. Went to this remote area of Vietnam. We helped out with extractions, fillings, fluoride, fluoride, oral health instructions.

And then we had this little trailer next to a school doing fisher sealants and stuff. And that was great. And actually, the funny thing about DentAid is I asked DentAid, this is like 13 years ago, I asked DentAid, look, can you contribute something? Can you give us something? We’re going there. We’d like to give them some tools.

And so this huge shipment of like luxators and forceps and stuff comes to our uni flat. And like, how the bloody hell are we going to take this to Vietnam by international airways? And no one put a line. It went through security, went through everything. No one said anything. We took all these like instruments and stuff, some in our rucksack, some in luggage, they may all manage to get through.

And then we gave it to them and then they said, okay, how much is it worth? And I don’t know where it’s worth. So we just wrote 10, 000 on it. Cause it’s really heavy. We were at 10, 000 and we gave it to them. Like here’s all the instruments. So shout out to DentAid for being so helpful back then, which is amazing. So yeah, elective, you’re right. We just searched it up and we knew some people who’d done East meets West before. So that was a fantastic experience.

[James]
That’s cool. It’s funny. We went out to Liberia last year as a RECCE and we had a similar experience and brought two, three suitcases full of dental stuff and they got really sketchy about all the anesthetic car peels since we spent the first three hours in the security in the back room in Liberia airport. And I explain to them what we’re doing with all these drugs and needles.

[Jaz]
No, but here’s a funny thing, James, is that of all the instruments and stuff, right? You know what they hung me up on? You know what they stopped me in security for? They didn’t stop me for the Luxator. They didn’t stop me for the metal instruments. They stopped me for my hairspray.

[James]
Nice.

[Jaz]
Sorry, you were saying?

[James]
Dangerously stylish.

[Jaz]
So that’s the beard.

[James]
I was just saying for the longer term stuff, I thought it almost seemed a bit harder to find longer term stuff, but I guess all of the short term. Institutions have people working longer term for them. So I think if you probably are well connected in all of those, you can find other ones, but I think the rest of them is, it seems to mostly be kind of medical clinics that have set up kind of by either mission or aid or religious organizations.

So yeah, I found it was maybe a little bit tougher to find longer term options. Yeah. I think the same sort of rules apply. And just changing the search to this country longer term mission support, longer term dental aid.

[Jaz]
You’re right. I think if you open up yourself, the opportunities that there will be there and keep speaking to people in that space. So James, I want to know, are you looking to raise some money towards the mission stuff? How can we help you, my friend?

[James]
Yeah. So we are the group we’re going with. They operate on a kind of a support raised fundraising platform. So the charity itself doesn’t have money, which it’s able to give to the workers. It’s kind of set up a bit like a mercy ship. So my wife and I have been thinking about this for a long time. So we’ve got a reasonably substantial amount of savings, which we’re able to put towards it. But the budget for our year, which is, all our flights, accommodation, medical insurance, evacuation insurance, food and drink, internet, electricity, basically all of our living expenses in Liberia comes to, I’m in the car, I’m running a car, comes to about 50, 000 a year.

Which was way more than we’d originally thought it would be. But I think as a result of basically the destruction of the infrastructure in the country, it’s just, everything’s really, really expensive. Yeah. And schooling, for the kids. So we’re looking to raise that from kind of friends and family.

That’s also why I really wanted to get dentists involved because I feel like, although my friends and family kind of understand what we’re doing, unless you are clinical, I think that it gives you kind of a different perspective on the sort of need that might be being met. So I really would love just to have, like you say, have the Protruserati behind me just to say that I feel like I’ve got people to talk to if I’m having that, if I need to about things and just to share the journey with other people.

[Jaz]
We would love that. We would love for you to speak to us and we would love to post images. And I would love for you to just keep reminding us of that donation link, because it might not be the right time for someone now, but in three months time, it might be the right someone. If everyone just gives up their 10 pound latte for a couple of weeks and actually just puts it towards your fantastic cause, it’ll be good.

[James]
I mean, that’s my thought. I mean, it feels, it feels really weird asking people for money, but you know, I kind of think if I can get, if we can get lots of people involved, if we had a thousand dentists who thought this was a cool thing and they gave a pound a week that would more than cover our year.

And it means that we’d be able to stay for as long as we need to. I think it’s a sensible idea, but our organization, they don’t allow you to go until you’ve raised 90 percent of your first year because they don’t want a situation where you’re out there and then run out of funding. So we’re kind of in a bit of a limbo land at the moment where we’re kind of mentally preparing to go in January, but it’s contingent on us actually getting the funding required. We’ll be in a bit of a funny position, I guess, in towards the year, maybe getting a bit.

[Jaz]
Let’s see what the Protruserati can do. They’re very altruistic bunch as well. They helped a lot with Nafisa, who’s just about raised a million dollars. Like this wasn’t all from just Protruserati, this was from all over the world.

A lot of the stuff they did, but they, they were very generous. And so it’s nice to support charitable projects like yourselves, James. So what I’m going to do is, do you know the link off by heart? Is there a link that I can, I’m going to, we’ll talk about the link and I’ll put it in the show notes anyway. But is there a link that you can publicize now?

[James]
I think the easiest thing is to go to our website. So it’s just www. thehuntersinliberia. co. uk. And that has kind of all the information about what we’re doing. It’s got social media links and it’s got links to the ways in which you can support us either through one off givings or regular givings. So yeah, all the information to be found on there.

[Jaz]
I will definitely be setting up something like a regular thing for you. So leave that to me. I’m going to make the website protrusive.co.uk/liberia. And I’ll get that to basically anyone who goes on that website. We’ll go to your, we’ll just redirect basically to yours.

So I’ve just written that a note for that. So, Erika, Krissel, team, can you please help me set that link up? That’d be great. So they will do that. And please, please keep us posted about the wonderful work that you’ve been doing in Liberia. I hope everything goes amazing. We’re all rooting for you. And hopefully it may even open up the door for students and dentists for the protrusive community to visit you and help out and maybe visit neighboring nations and really create a movement here, right of helping just this wonderful thing that you’re doing. So James, thanks so much for your time, but thanks so much for being just a fantastic human.

You and your family have touched me. Like, I’m feeling very, just privileged to be able to speak to someone like you, who’s doing sending out good vibes into the world, like really into the world. So more power to you. And I hope, I wish you guys all the health and success.

[James]
I appreciate it, man. It’s been, yeah, it’s been awesome being on the podcast. Thanks so much for having me.

Jaz’s Outro:
Well, there we have it guys. Thank you so much for listening all the way to the end. If you’re feeling inspired, if you have some budget, you know how as a business, if you contribute to charity, that’s actually tax deductible.

I think every business should be looking to allocate a percentage of its pot to a charitable cause. So if you have some funds left in your annual budget for your charitable donations, then please do consider supporting one of our own, Protruserati, James and his family, so they can deliver this aid work in Liberia.

I would want you to visit protrusive.co.uk/liberia, but also join Protrusive Guidance. On Protrusive Guidance, which is. www. protrusive. app so you can actually access on Safari or Chrome, but you can also download the native app as well. And on there, I’ve asked James, once he goes there, to do monthly updates.

Now that you’ve listened this far, don’t you wanna see what James gets up to? His adventure, his charitable, beautiful cause that he’s looking to do in Liberia. So if you want to stay up to date with everything he’s doing, do join Protrusive Guidance and watch out for those posts, but once again, it would be great for us to kind of club together and help support, I’ll be setting up a monthly donation myself for this cause.

So if you want to get involved, check out protrusive.co.uk/liberia to donate to James. James, we wish you all the best. We are so, so proud of you really are a rare individual and you wish you all the best to the protrusive community. Thanks again for listening to the end. I’ll catch you same time, same place next week. Bye for now.