EVERETT — Michael Mallahan stood in front of second-graders this week and answered questions about his planned medical mission trip to Guatemala.
The St. Mary Magdalen students were curious to know what kind of volunteer work he would do during his 11th trip to the country.
“I’ll be spending a lot of time cleaning ears,” he said. “We do a lot of that.”
An audiologist and the director of the Hearing and Balance Lab in Everett, Mallahan, 53, left for Guatemala on Wednesday. He volunteers with the local chapter of the national nonprofit Healing the Children and joined his first medical mission trip to Guatemala in 2003.
Since that time, he and other volunteer audiologists have evaluated more than 3,000 children and fitted over 1,000 hearing aids for children in Guatemala.
“When you get to see a child that’s five years old, maybe 12 years old, and they’ve never heard their mother or they’re starting to hear things they never heard before, it’s pretty awe-inspiring,” Mallahan said.
Healing the Children provides medical services to needy children around the world, he said. The doctors and nurses who travel to Guatemala volunteer their time and services, pay their own expenses and help arrange for shipments of donated supplies and equipment, health screenings and training for local professionals who help when medical teams aren’t in the country.
Over the course of 11 days, Mallahan’s team will fly from Guatemala City to the northern part of the country and help children in the city of Flores. Then they will provide more free examinations to the children of families who live or traveled to Morales, Guatemala. They will make a final stop in the city of Zacapa before returning to Guatemala City.
Mallahan expects that he and a team of three other audiologists will provide free examinations to 400 children during the trip. Of those, at least 100 children will receive hearing aids, he said.
Children will also receive stickers, coloring books, markers, pencils, toothbrushes, and other donated items from students at St. Mary Magdalen School once they are done with their examination. Nicole Lusier and Monnica Peinado’s second grade classes organized a week-long, all-school donation drive to collect items for Mallahan to take with him.
“He does the hearing tests for our school so the kids know him very well,” Lusier said. “I think it’s wonderful he goes to help.”
During his visit with the second graders at St. Mary Magdalen School Mallahan thanked the students for their generosity.
“When I come back I’ll show you pictures of what we’ve been doing,” he said.
Some of the pictures he’ll bring back with him are sure to be of kids with soccer balls. As the president of the Irish Soccer Club, Mallahan asks teams to consider giving up trophies in exchange for soccer balls he can deliver to children in Guatemala. The team members sign the balls and then he makes sure the teams get pictures of the children who receive the donated soccer balls.
“It’s better than a trophy,” he said.
This month’s trip to Guatemala isn’t the last Mallahan plans on taking. In a few years, he believes there will be enough Guatemalans trained to help locally, allowing him to begin similar work elsewhere, possibly in Ecuador.
“My vision is very soon I will be working myself out of a job in Guatemala and moving to another country,” he said. “The only issue will continue to be funding for hearing aids and I’m working on getting people in the country to fund hearing aids.”
“I will retire doing this, that’s my plan.”
Amy Daybert: 425-339-3491, adaybert@heraldnet.com.
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