Mekele, Ethiopia: Through Different Eyes

We sit at an outdoor café in Mekele, the Tigraian capital in northern Ethiopia.  The Italians are long gone but one few vestiges of their sad attempt at colonizing Ethiopia is espresso.  That combined with some superior Arabica beans grown here, in the birth place of coffee, makes for an excellent cup. 

We’re squatting on tiny wooden stools, exchanging stares with the locals.  I hear a few mutters, “Americana”.  A little boy approaches with a baby on his shoulders, his hand outstretched.  He gets driven away.   He wanders off, his pants so torn his buttocks show through.  

There are no options in ordering coffee.   It arrives in a demitasse cup, with a quad shot that gives me a rush before I’m half way through.  Like an extra showing up on the wrong set, a cyclist in a tight lycra racing outfit, rides slowly by.  Then five minutes later he reappears, heading the opposite direction.  This may be the only decent flat paved road in Tigre. 

We’re here, led by an American eye surgeon, Dr. Matt Oliva, to participate in an eye camp at a local eye hospital.  The rest of the American team is two students (Nikki and Benji), a friend of Matt’s (Eric) and Toni, our SightLife photographer.  It’s our second eye camp, since arriving in Ethiopia two weeks ago.  The Quiha Hospital is perched on top of a sun-baked hill above the airport, a decent sized modern structure, with a new hospital being built next door and stocked with the latest equipment, thanks to major infusions of international NGO funding.   Our host is Dr. Tilahun Kiros, the head hospital surgeon.  

The nurses have put the word out to the surrounding communities and by the time we arrive at 8 AM a crowd is pressing up against the gates.  We walk into the hospital with the stares and hopes of hundreds of people focused on us.  Immediately the screening process begins, with long lines forming.  Some people will wait for days and several hundred more are expected in the next couple of days.  The need is just overwhelming.  Worn faces stare up at us, their eyes milky from cataracts or corneal scarring.  Frightened children crouch amongst their elders, some blind in both eyes.  Sticks fashioned into canes form a strange forest, rising up above the patients seated on the ground, evidence of the difficulty they face in making their way in a land where they can’t see.  

The doctors examine the cornea patients.  We only brought six corneas with us from the US, but the line is 50 deep.  The rules are set.  The bilateral blind first and only local patients, to improve the odds of follow-up.   Patients approach me pleading.   I try to explain the shortage of corneas,  that only six have come and we are trying to increase the supply domestically with an eye bank in Addis Ababa.  They listen politely and then resume their pleading. 

One young unilateral blind man, Bene, is a third year mechanical engineering student with broken English.  He explains again and again that he needs the surgery to allow him to be eligible for a graduate studies program in Germany.  Only students who pass a physical exam can go.  My answers do him no good.  He tries other volunteers, pleading his case.  Two days later he is still at the clinic, trying one doctor after another, unwilling to give up his dream.
  
We head into the operating theatre, change into scrubs and, for non-surgeon volunteers, try to find ways to be useful, without irritating the nurses, who are fully capable of performing the functions.  I arrive late from interviewing cornea patients, with our photographer, so I try to be useful helping patients on and off the operating table, putting in drops, and putting on bandages.  Finally I settle into a job that has no competition, cutting strips of medical tape (plaster) for the bandaging.  I take my job very seriously, as the Plaster Master!  

The surgeons are the heroes, working twelve hour shifts day after day during these camps, eyes glued to the operating microscopes, their hands performing intricate incisions and stitching.  Eye surgery has to be one of least gory surgeries on the human body, with little to no blood.  A shot to block the pain has patients calmly submitting to the surgeons making incisions into their eyes for glaucoma and cataract surgeries. 

The hours tick by; the line of patients is endless.  20. 40. 60. 80. 90 surgeries.   It’s night before the flow of patients stops.  We leave the hospital and see hundreds of hopeful patients bedding down on the patios, waiting for us to return tomorrow. 

I’ve been called the “White Father” and had some patients, when being interviewed or helped off the table, suddenly grab my hand and kiss it in appreciation.  It’s both disturbing and moving.  It is hard to imagine finding a more direct and dramatic way to alter people’s lives than by providing them with the gift of sight.

Besides the surgeons, the reality is that this is more about the experience’s impact on us, the volunteers, than the patients we are trying to help.   It’s about stepping out of the bubble that we build around ourselves and learning to view ourselves as citizens of the world, sharing experiences (and physical contact) with people who come from such different backgrounds, where just a small amount of help can make a dramatic improvement in their lives.  There are many legitimate questions about foreign aid to Africa, but when you personalize it down to fellow human beings who are suffering it’s hard deny them their dreams.  


Tim Schottman is the Chief Global Officer for SightLife.  You can learn more about his work in this piece on NPR’s Morning Edition or through the story he shared at SVP’s 2010 Fall Meeting.  Tim has been an SVP Partner for two years, and serves as the Lead Partner for the Vietnamese Friendship Association.