Five thousand miles for children's smiles

At any given moment, 26-year old US marine Winston Fiore could be packing up his backpack and tent and moving on to the next city on his predetermined route, which could very well be in the next country.

 

As a solo traveler with five thousand miles of ground to cover across nine countries, Fiore is expected to be on the move all the time.

He is after all, the pioneer of Smile Trek, a backpacking expedition that takes pedestrianism to a superhuman level, and has him walking through unfamiliar Asian landscapes 90 percent of the time to raise funds to provide cleft lip and palate surgery for children in developing countries through the International Children’s Surgical Foundation (ICSF).

 

While on the road, Fiore joins medical missions and presents his cause to Rotary Clubs, schools, and various other institutions to raise awareness and generate donations.

 

The idea for Smile Trek came to Fiore when, after returning from training in Lingure, Senegal and seeing the widespread poverty there, he realized that he no longer wanted to only see the world—he wanted to change it in whatever way he could.

 

Knowing he couldn’t help everyone, and thoroughly touched by the sight of Senegalese innocents having to deal with hardships at such a young age, Fiore narrowed down his cause to something involving children.

'No child should grow up feeling ashamed'  

When he came across the story of plastic surgeon Dr. Geoff Williams of the ICSF, who gave up his practice to offer facial reconstructive surgery to children from the developing world, Fiore decided that he wanted to be part of that particular cause.

 

“As someone whose favorite pastime is socializing, I could never imagine having to grow up with such a stigma. Making friends can be hard enough for children without a facial deformity, but for those living with a cleft, the chances of leading a normal life are slim to none,” Fiore said on his website.

 

“No child should grow up feeling ashamed of what he or she looks like, and every child should be afforded the chance to smile,” he said.  

He then plotted a route across Southeast Asia, because according to him, cleft births are prevalent in the region.

 

Finally, in September 2011, he set out for Singapore, and since then has gone through six countries—Singapore, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, China, Taiwan—before finally touching down in the Philippines.

 

Fiore shared that his journey has been smooth-sailing so far, with his biggest problem being the language barrier, particularly in China.

 

That’s not to say that the trip has been uneventful—how can it be when Fiore walks alone most of the way, befriends strangers at random, couch surfs or checks in at cheap hotels when he can, but sleeps in his tent when he needs to wherever he may be (once he even stayed in a Muslim graveyard!)?

 

The nomadic nature of his trek has afforded him a good, up-close-and-personal view of the countries. Of course, this does not come without certain misadventures. In Thailand, for instance, he was bitten by a stray dog. In China, he was picked up by cops in China simply for pitching his tent near their station.

Why walk?  

One wonders why he chose to travel via the most primitive transport mechanism known to man—his own two feet. There are certainly less dangerous and less physically taxing ways to raise funds for a cause.

 

But the self-proclaimed “pedestrian at heart” said that despite certain misadventures, the act of walking allows him to have a more direct impact on the countries he visits.

 

Case-in-point: in April, while walking through a fish market in northern Vietnam near the border of China, Fiore came across a man named Anh who was suffering from Facial Plexiform Neurofibromatosis, or elephant man syndrome.

 

Fiore moved by Anh’s condition, approached him, and offered to connect him with Dr. Williams for a free surgery. After some important phone calls made with the help of a Vietnamese couch surfer, arrangements were soon underway for Anh’s surgery, bringing rare tears to the military man’s eyes.

 

He wrote, “I realized that in addition to seeing the world, I wanted to participate in it directly and contribute, in some small way, to its improvement. And if I wanted to meet people face-to-face as I had in Senegal, I decided there was only one way to travel: on foot.”

 

As of this writing, Fiore has already exceeded his $50,000 goal (he’s raised over $55,000 already), but that doesn’t mean the trek is over for him. He will continue to raise funds and present the cause to anyone who cares to listen until his trek ends in Singapore.

 

When that time comes, Fiore’s epic Smile Trek might be over, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to stop walking. He shared that he already has an apprenticeship lined up with The Urban Canopy, an Illinois-based urban agriculture initiative.

 

Once again, one wonders—does he not want to rest for a while when the trek is over, to enjoy the sheer happiness that doing good brings to the soul? But, considering that this is the man who decided to walk 5,000 miles for smiles, it doesn’t seem so strange—Fiore just doesn’t seem to be the kind of man who can stand still for very long. –KG, GMA News