Helping hands across the ocean
Vacation in Fiji moves Austinite to devote herself to helping island's impoverished
By M ary Ann Roser, Austin American-Statesman (TX)
May 3, 2004
 Allison Batlin found a paradise in the lush waters and landscape of Fiji. But after her vacation ended, she could not forget the squalor she left behind.
So began a love affair.
It started in 1997 when Batlin, a flight attendant for Southwest Airlines, went scuba diving in Fiji with her husband, Steve. A tour guide said they would visit a local school, so they packed small gifts for the children: paper, pencils, erasers. Batlin saw deprivation that appalled her: children so poor they lived in filth and had no school supplies, no health care, no clean running water.
"If they can't make it, grow it or catch it, they do without it," she said.
The children they visited on the island of Beqa accepted their gifts with big smiles and a touch of awe.
"If you saw the look on the children's faces . . . it was the most extraordinary experience," Batlin said.
That Christmas, Batlin shipped more school supplies, clothes and bandages. It struck her that with a little help from her friends, they could make a difference in Fiji. So, Batlin and a small crew went back to the school and asked what else they could do.
They needed computers, the teacher said. Never mind that the village had no electricity or running water.
Batlin's group shipped computers and generators to the school. But the next time they visited, they found the computers under plastic and unused.
"There were wasp nests inside," Batlin said.
Undeterred, Batlin focused her energies on collecting medical supplies, school supplies and clothing -- the basics of life.
But she needed help. Word had spread around Fiji about Batlin's efforts, and more people were clamoring for medicine and clothes. She told her eye doctor, and he recommended someone who could handle a challenge: Austin nurse Barb Sellars.
"A marriage was made," Batlin said.
Since 1999, Batlin and Sellars have been gathering medical and school supplies from anyone who would listen.
"I'm chief beggar. I have no pride," Batlin said. " 'No' means 'maybe.' 'Maybe' means 'yes.' I don't stop. I'm like a dog with a bone. I don't let it go."
Sellars, who hasn't left Austin in 12 years because of her volunteer animal rescue work, in addition to a full-time job as a nurse in a pediatrician's office, has connections to other doctors and pharmaceutical company representatives.
She once asked a drug salesperson to donate a truckload of aspirin the company planned to destroy rather than ship back because it was no longer needed.
"I hate to see stuff go to waste," said Sellars, who has seen Batlin's photographs of children covered with scabies blisters and huge boils because of unsanitary living conditions. "All of the sales reps know me."
She carries photographs of Fiji with her and talks constantly about it.
She and Batlin collect enough every six months from the Austin area to send a large container from Los Angeles. They help a dozen Fijian islands under the auspices of a charity Batlin formed, the Loloma Foundation, which means "from the heart."
The foundation's next shipment leaves Los Angeles in June, and Batlin and Sellars are asking Central Texas residents to help fill the ship. Donations are needed by May 19 because they must be flown to Los Angeles and packed for sailing by June 4, Batlin said.
"We need wheelchairs; we need Band-Aids; we need Neosporin," she said. "We desperately need antibiotic cream."
Sellars suggested that families who have gone through hospice care might have medical equipment to donate. Batlin said she'd happily fetch it.
"We'll take anything in medical supplies," Sellars said.
Loloma has established a free clinic in Beqa that it stocks, and after the shipment arrives in July -- the voyage takes a month -- the people of Beqa will have running water thanks to a catchment system Loloma is providing.
The boxes first go to Rotary Club President Elizabeth Clayton in Suva, the capital of Fiji, which is modern, unlike some of the primitive villages on other Fijian islands. Clayton, a former furniture manufacturer, lives above an empty warehouse, where she stores the boxes until Batlin and her crew arrive to sort them.
Batlin's team then visits the villages to see how previous donations are being used. Dr. Lance Hendricks of San Diego, a member of the Loloma board, sees villagers in clinics and tends to their ailments.
They visit orphanages and retirement homes, schools, social service agencies and families of prison inmates.
"It's very much hands-on," Batlin said.
She retired in 2000 so she could devote herself full time to her passion.
"That man's getting a wheelchair," she said, showing a photograph of a smiling man in a battered wheelchair.
Why not devote that energy to collecting items for needy people in the United States?
Batlin said that's the No. 1 question she gets.
"We do not know true poverty here," she said. "True poverty is when there is no hope, there is no help, and no one is coming. No one cares."
The Loloma Foundation is about giving people dignity and empowering lives, Batlin said.
"It started on a simple vacation," she said. "Never in my life have I done anything like this. I was just there to dive."
Then she fell in love with people, and nothing was the same.
maroser@statesman.com; 445-3619
How to help
If you wish to donate medical supplies or other items to Fiji that need to be picked up, contact Allison Batlin at 323-0442. For more information about Batlin's and Barb Sellars' work in Fiji and the Loloma Foundation, see www.lolomafoundation.org.
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