THE DETERMINED DENTIST
DR. JAMES ROLFE—COVER OF MAGAZINE
Show Me Your Best Smile
Dr. James Rolfe and his mission for healthier teeth in Afghanistan
By: Ameena Kazem
Why should a successful dentist in Santa Barbara be concerned about the dental care of the orphans and widows in Afghanistan? Why should he organize a dental relief project that will provide extensive free treatment and education for the people in Afghanistan and fund the project out of his own pocket? The list of answers is endless, his dedication is admirable, and his name is, Dr. James Rolfe.
Practicing from his busy dental office in downtown Santa Barbara, James Rolfe is not the typical high profile dentist. With a family of four children and eleven grandchildren, one would imagine this successful dentist living in a lavish million-dollar home and driving around in his luxury car. On the contrary, you will find Rolfe either on his motorcycle or in his 1962 GMC truck, loading supplies and equipment for his latest project, ADRP. The Afghanistan Dental Relief Project is a non-profit organization established in 2003, to provide dental treatment facilities in underserved areas of Afghanistan. According to Rolfe, “the goal of ADRP is to staff dental facilities with volunteers, to train the Afghan people in dentistry and dental technology, to provide dental treatment at no cost to the needy, and to provide instruction in methods of preventive dental care.” Used equipment is being donated by practicing dentists in the United States which is being repaired, crated, and shipped by sea to be used in facilities throughout Afghanistan. Networks of Afghani volunteers are being established to organize housing and supportive services for volunteer dental health workers who are going there to do this work. Dental equipment and supplies are being donated by manufacturers and distributors for use in the treatment facilities. Dental technology textbooks are being purchased to educate the orphans and widows in basic sciences so that they can become dental professionals themselves. Four training programs will teach them the skills of the dental assistant, dental clerical worker, dental hygienist, and dental laboratory technician, both giving them a future and helping solve the long-term needs of the country.
During Rolfe’s second visit to Afghanistan, he realized that the enormous lack of dental care within the country could not be solved with two-week trips, by bringing needed equipment as airline luggage. He decided to make a long-term commitment to the Afghan people. Rolfe decided that his periodic trips to Afghanistan to help provide free dental care was not enough. He wanted a permanent facility within the country to help assist and aid the large mass of Afghans that are in constant need of dental care,as well as to train dental technicians from the Afghan population. Rolfe decided that the only solution was to have a permanent facility in Afghanistan, but the technology there would not support building the clinic there. Instead, he spent eighteen months and 4,000 hours building a modern self-contained clinic in a shipping container. This clinic, along with 120,000 pounds of dental equipment and supplies, has now been sent by sea to the Kart-e-Char neighborhood of Kabul. There, it will sit beside a new, two-story modern guesthouse, and act to help Afghans with their teeth at no cost. It has been an arduous journey for Rolfe and the road to achieving this goal has seemed quite impossible at times. As Rolfe states, “It feels like an ongoing obstacle course, but eventually, I know that I will make it to the finish line.”
Zeba Magazine is privileged to bring you this in-depth interview with Dr. James Rolfe, our hero of the month.
Q: What caught your attention to Afghanistan?
I had been following the events as documented by the media after the United States had forced the Taliban out of Afghanistan , and I could not see progress being made to help the poor. Many NGO humanitarian aid organizations were situated in Afghanistan and ostensibly doing work there, but no one was overseeing their programs, and little progress could be seen in many areas. Learning of an orphanage in remote Wardak Province, I assembled portable equipment weighing nearly 500 pounds and flew it to Afghanistan, giving care to the orphans for the first time in their lives. Because I had no one to assist me, I enlisted each orphan after he was treated, and he became my assistant. I found them very intelligent and eager to learn. As time went on, local village people learned about my clinic, and came to receive treatment themselves. When I first examined their mouths for problems, I was shocked to find many abscessed teeth in each individual, a condition I had never encountered in America. I learned that the entire population of Wardak Province had no access to dental care at all, and at the same time I knew that the orphan population had no future without education, I decided to try to put together a program wherein the orphans could learn dental technology in a clinical setting that would also provide free basic dental care for anyone. I went back to America, and returned a few months later to provide dental care in a women’s medical clinic. During this time, I found women to be underserved as well, and learned that they were not empowered to seek treatment on their own. I decided to orient my training program in dental technology to reach out to women as well as the orphans, handicapped, socially disadvantaged, and the poor.
Q: Due to the poor conditions and lack of dental care as a whole in Afghanistan, you founded ADRP in 2003. Please briefly explain ADRP and its mission.
The Afghanistan Dental Relief Project is an organization established to provide dental treatment facilities in underserved areas of Afghanistan, to staff these facilities with volunteers, to train the Afghan people in dentistry and dental technology, to provide dental treatment at no cost to the needy, and to provide instruction in methods of preventative dental care. The whole of Afghanistan is basically without dental care. Almost thirty years of war has destroyed the technical infrastructure there, eliminating many of the essentials for basic living: reliable water, electricity, telephone service, public transportation, refrigeration, decent roads, sanitation, leaving the people to survive as best they can. Years of civil war killed so many parents that the orphan population comprises almost ten percent of the total population. Years of successive drought conditions have made it impossible to grow self-sustaining crops to provide food, and many able-bodied men must leave their families to work as laborers in foreign countries to feed their children. Yet everywhere in Afghanistan, you see the hard-working people courageously trying to make their way against these odds to survive and hopefully make their lives better. Our goal is to help them by addressing the almost-total lack of professional dental care in Afghanistan. We are working to establish permanent dental centers in underserved areas. Most of the people seeking services in these centers will never have seen a dentist or have received dental treatment. Dealing with patients who have no dental treatment exposure, volunteer dentists are experiencing that these people have complex problems with their teeth that come from a whole lifetime of cumulative lack of professional care, they have never had their teeth cleaned or had cavities treated in time to prevent serious problems from developing. Within each person’s mouth, serious conditions exist which undoubtedly cause the person serious pain and certainly affect their overall health, sometimes causing septicemia and death, so much so that it is necessary to triage these conditions in order to treat the worst problem first. With almost thirty million people without basic dental care, any dental treatment facility is easily overwhelmed by the incredible demand for services. According to the American Dental Association, there are no volunteer facilities established currently in Afghanistan, even though many American dentists are eager to go there, at their own expense, to volunteer their help.
Q: How difficult has it been to obtain the size of land needed to accommodate to this dental facility?
(Laughing)……This is where the story gets interesting. For over a year, I had negotiated with the Afghan Minister of Urban Affairs and Housing Pashtun for land for our shippable clinic, as well as a larger piece of land for our permanent twelve-operatory clinic and school. The Minister had told me that the land would be temporarily deeded over to our organization when I arrived, so I was eager to look at it. Water bottle in hand, I walked across Kabul a distance of about eight kilometers to the site in Kartahe Seeh, near the old Darulaman Palace. The intense heat, dry air, and the exercise of walking across the hilly and rough terrain made me very thirsty, and the direct sun brought a blush to my fair skin. Eventually, I arrived at the site, a vast open area with a thick layer of dust and little else. Where the map had showed roads, there were none. The “park” on the drawings that had been sent by the Minister was the bombed-out ruins of former government buildings. In an area of sparse development aside from a few simple mud houses, I could not imagine how my shippable clinic could function in this raw, dusty setting. Later I learned that this land was actually controlled by another ministry, and was not even available. Disappointed, I walked back to the guest house, determined to spend the next day exploring the alternative site, a small plot in the Macroroyan #4 housing project. Early the next morning, I set out walking again. The typical transportation in Kabul is by cab. Most cabs are Toyota Corollas of varying vintages and mechanical conditions. Communicating with cab drivers in English is challenging, especially having no knowledge of the city. Coincidentally, I found myself in front of a Honda motorcycle store. Spontaneously, I found myself buying a 125-cc Honda motorcycle, which became a liberating experience eventually, after a week of getting lost in the streets of Kabul and finding my way back again. Over the next six weeks, I was to put nearly 1,300 kilometers on the bike, learning Kabul like my hometown. At no time did I feel threatened or in danger, although quick thinking and reacting was always a necessity. The second morning, I went to the site of the alternative piece of land. A fence surrounded it, with a locked gate. Using a 100-foot tape measure, I measured the land and converted the measurements to meters. While I was drawing the land plot, a young man came to me and asked what I was doing. I explained that the land had been given by the Minister Pashtun for a dental clinic and training center. He asked me to write it down, and then disappeared with the note. In a few minutes, an older man appeared, who began to argue with me in Dari about the land. It became apparent that the older man would not accept the presence of the project on that land. As time passed, even more people came and expressed their disapproval of my using the land, which had recently been improved with a simple garden: a few small trees, sunflowers, and some small rose bushes. Returning to the Minister’s office and speaking with his secretary, I was told that the land was mine to use for the project, and to go ahead and start construction. For over a year, I had been communicating with Minister Pashtun regarding occupying this piece of land with our project. I needed assurance that my investment of over 3,000 hours of my working time, as well as over $200,000 of my own money, would be respected and preserved so that the poor Afghan people could benefit from it. To make a long story short, I was unable to secure the land, and thus, we were left disappointed once again. As a result, I was forced to turn around our shipment and send it back to America.
Q: With negative criticism and many unsuccessful attempts, why do you continue with this mission? Where does such passion and generosity derive from?
Because, I am so affected by Afghanistan, while others are so disaffected. The Afghan people are neglected and they suffer from an illness, an illness of war. They are in constant struggle for survival because that is what they have been familiar with for almost three decades. To heal this country, the infrastructure in Afghanistan must be rebuilt from the bottom. Sending money to Afghanistan will not improve it; the people need to “learn how to fish, instead of being given fish”. By rebuilding each facet of the culture from the bottom up, the country and the Afghan people will prevail. But we must begin at the absolute bottom, because hardly anyone has anything to build their live on, and little hope for improvement.
Q: Doesn’t the instability of Afghanistan raise fear for you and ADRP?
I’m not worried about some terrorist or anti-American bothering me. I worry about eating a sandwich with green produce that hasn’t been properly washed.
Q: And what about the costs that keep incurring?
I think I’m living on karma instead of money. The money is not very valuable. I think it’s more important that I live within my conscience.
Q: What is the current status of ADRP?
Our project to help the Afghan people is nearly established. Three huge shipping containers filled with sixty tons of dental equipment and supplies are now on their way to Kabul. When they arrive, they will be set up on private land, adjacent to our volunteer guesthouse, a new two-story seven-bedroom modern house with all modern conveniences. Volunteers from around the world are waiting for its completion, ready and willing to go there at their own expense to help the Afghan people. We are seeking support financially to set up the facility and guest-house, and encourage people to join with us in our effort. Afghans who left in earlier years are especially encouraged to look at their lives and compare them with the lives of current Afghanistan residents. Imagine that they are sitting in the room with you now. Suffering from malnutrition, uneducated, chronically ill from a number of causes, psychologically traumatized, little to rely on, and no real hope for the future, they would perhaps starkly contrast with the lives of the average reader. Now can be the time for us to give back. How can we say anything other than we are better off just because of the Grace of God; it could have been our fate as well.
Q: Zeba is truly honored to have had this opportunity with you, and we hope that this article will raise awareness and attract support and volunteers for ADRP. Any final words before we go to print?
Thank you for exposing ADRP to your readers. To effectively create change in Afghanistan, more analysis must be done by informed, altruistically oriented people, who actually feel passion for their task. Too many “experts” are employed at high salaries in this area, with little motivating passion to drive their aid projects forward. In fact, from my experience, this is one of the major problems in reconstructing Afghanistan. Desperate people trying to survive need passionate, selfless humanitarians, finding and implementing resources for their recovery. How to access these people and get them into positions of influence is a huge challenge. Aid workers typically lack altruism, passion, and creativity without these attributes, there is no driving force to create change. During my six-week visit to Afghanistan, I did not meet one person like myself, who had created, funded, and implemented his own program with his own energy. As the richest and most powerful nation in the world, we have an obligation to help the Afghan people, not just to make platitudes, but to create change from a desire and passion to see justice and equity prevail. Only then can we earn the respect as a nation of the rest of the world community. We should become the Big Brother instead of the Big Bully, and actually help people rather than just impose our will with force. Every person can make a difference in the world, just by deciding to do so. If we all make that decision, together we will change the world.
For further information, please visit, www.adrpinc.org. The Afghanistan Dental Relief Project, Inc., a 501C3 Non-Profit Charitable Organization; 31 East Canon Perdido Street; Santa Barbara, CA 93101; email: adrp@verizon.net Tel:805-963-2329
Please access our website, www.adrpinc.org.
Thank you for your interest.
James G. Rolfe, DDS; Founder
Afghanistan Dental Relief Project, Inc.