- May 12, 2024
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Dr. Robert Thousand Jr. recently took a mission trip to Africa, where he pulled 400 teeth in two weeks.
Dr. Robert Thousand Jr., of Dental Specialists of North Florida, is used to charity work. Thousand, who runs a Palm Coast practice with his son, Dr. Robert Thousand III, volunteers at free clinics in St. Augustine. He works with several churches, offering dental care in mobile clinics to migrant farm workers and the underprivileged.
But nothing could have prepared him for his most recent effort, a mission trip to Africa, where he pulled more 400 teeth.
With tools, antiseptics, two dentists from St. Augustine, a pharmacist and a dietician — everyone paid their own way — he took a 31-hour plane trip, and then traveled three days through the bush and into Tanzania, where he set up a clinic with no electricity or running water. The people lived in dirt houses with thatched roofs. Every night, they brought their goats inside to sleep.
For two weeks, he stayed at a nun convent.
“We went to a church, and the nuns told us where the indigenous people were,” he said. And so that’s where he and his team went.
The first day they arrived at the village, he remembers masses of Africans rushing toward the hillside to meet his caravan. They were curious about why white men would be nearing their camp.
“I don’t know if any of them had ever seen a dentist before in their lives,” Thousand said.
He added that, after sleeping two weeks in mosquito tents, he panicked the first night back in his own bed, when he awoke at night and couldn’t feel a net draped over him.
One day, after Thousand had pulled 100 teeth, he remembers his work area in especially bad shape.
“There were flies everywhere,” he said, “because of all the blood.”
He washed off in big buckets of water, and says he felt like a Spartan.
During his stay, the doctor also treated a case of malaria, as well as stitched up a few people who were injured from motorcycle accidents.
Although he laments the fact that so much of the money the United States sends to ailing countries hardly ever trickles down to the people who actually need it, he takes comfort in knowing he did his part.
“At least I know where my efforts and time went,” he said.
Established 35 years ago, the Thousand Palm Coast office is located at 3 Cypress Branch Way. Call 445-4242.
