The Road to Ramata’s Smile

Editor’s note: We teamed up with the storytelling group Cliff Co. to create “Love Always Prevails,” the hybrid documentary film about Ramata’s and Mariana’s Operation Smile journey, featured above.

While Ghana offers some of Africa’s most beautiful landscapes, it also suffers from a lack of adequate infrastructure, health care services and economic opportunities, resulting in some of the world’s most significant barriers to safe surgical care for its citizens.

It also means rough roads lead from the rural community of Assin Praso to the historic city of Cape Coast.

Though the physical condition of the highways is the same for all who travel between the two cities, the round trips made by Mariana and her daughter, Ramata, were among the most challenging.

Ramata was born with a cleft lip and a cleft palate. Mariana was determined to access safe surgical care to repair her 4-year-old daughter’s condition.

Five times, Mariana raised enough money for bus fare and took Ramata to Cape Coast in search of a free surgical option. Five times, the return trip was made all the rockier by heartbreak.

Each time doctors assessed Ramata’s health, she was either anemic or too underweight to receive safe surgery. Even if she would have been deemed healthy enough for surgery, she had no way of being able to afford its cost.

Disappointed but undeterred, Mariana remained vigilant about finding care for Ramata despite her limited resources — she earns a meager living carrying water containers and gathering firewood for her neighbors. When Mariana met a nonmedical volunteer from Operation Smile Ghana who was conducting an awareness campaign in Assin Praso, the lives of the family would change forever.

At first, Mariana didn’t believe that the surgeries Ramata needed would be free when she called Clement Ofosuhemeng, the patient coordinator for Operation Smile Ghana, to learn more about the organization and its work. He assured Mariana that there would be no cost for any procedures needed to repair Ramata’s cleft condition and that Operation Smile would provide a bus to take patients from the Assin Praso area to the next surgical program in Cape Coast.

After Mariana and Ramata made the three-hour trek back to Cape Coast for the Operation Smile surgical program, yet another roadblock diverted Ramata away from care for a staggering sixth time. Ramata had passed her comprehensive health assessment and was approved for cleft lip surgery when she contracted malaria — a major health scare for the young patient in its own right.

Fortunately, Ramata survived her bout with malaria and returned to good health as she and her mother looked forward to the next Operation Smile surgical program in the eastern city of Ho. It would be here that she would receive the life-changing procedure which had proved to be so elusive.

In the months leading up to the Ho surgical program, Ramata started attending kindergarten and immediately developed an affinity for school and learning. She also experienced bullying from some of her classmates while others would stare at her cleft lip and shun her. The teasing and isolation drove Ramata to tears.

Mariana also suffered social hardships after Ramata was born. As her family offered little, if any, emotional support, she became the target of insults and blame from some of her neighbors for having birthed a child with a cleft condition. While these words infuriated Mariana, they also hardened her resolve to find a surgical solution for her daughter — to give her the chance to pursue an education without it being derailed by cruel treatment from her peers.

Again, Ramata and Mariana boarded the Operation Smile bus and made the 10-hour trip from Assin Praso to Ho. Again, she was cleared for surgery after her patient health assessment, but this time made it to the operating room without further complications and received surgery to repair her cleft lip.

When Mariana saw Ramata for the first time after surgery, she was overjoyed by the fact that her daughter would look like all the other children in their community.

Mariana marveled at the care and attention Ramata received during the surgical programs and was amazed by the love and care the volunteers showed the patients and their families. She said that she is happy to share Ramata’s story with everyone she meets and would tell other mothers in her community who give birth to children with cleft conditions about Operation Smile’s work in Ghana so they can avoid the anguish and frustration that she experienced in searching exhaustively for safe surgical care for her daughter.

Finally, Ramata truly began her journey toward healing. She returned to Ho twice over the following year to receive procedures at Operation Smile surgical programs to repair her cleft palate.

In 2019, Operation Smile returned to Ramata’s home in Assin Praso to see how life has improved for her and Mariana.

Since receiving her final cleft palate surgery in 2016, Ramata has developed into an outgoing young girl who is full of energy and enjoys playing with her newfound group of friends from the neighborhood.

No longer subject to the harmful bullying and teasing from some of her classmates, Ramata thrives in school and in life.

Today, she’s a confident and competitive student who loves to learn and is oftentimes the first student to raise her hand during class when the teacher asks a question.

While the journey to finding care for Ramata was challenging and full of unforeseen obstacles, the love Mariana has for her daughter never allowed her to lose hope.

And today, that love only continues to deepen as Mariana watches Ramata grow into an enthusiastic, hard-working and joyful young girl with a beautiful heart and a beautiful smile.