Working The Weekend

It’s not unusual to be working on a Saturday. But it doesn’t feel like a Saturday because we started on a Thursday.
The weather has been consistantly sunny and humid. The compound we are saying at is lovely though so waking up to another beautiful day really isn’t a hardship.
Last night, I had a nervous moment. So every night by 10:30pm you have to be in your rooms as the ground lights go off and the guards and guard dogs patrol the property. You really don’t want to be found unexpectedly by that crew. Now we are usually wiped by the end of the day so being in your room and ready for bed between 9-10pm is not a problem. However, last night, I was settling down and realized that I didn’t get my water for the night. Not a problem since the water cooler is just outside our door. When I opened the door, I was faced with pitch black meaning lights were off and the guards and dogs were on duty. Crap. I looked at my watch and realised I really had about 5 mins and wondered if the dogs knew that but really wanted/needed water...so I crept out. Dashed over to the cooler and shakily filled my bottle waiting to hear the low growl of a big dog at any second. My bottle filled and I dashed back the 2 ft and secured myself behind the door. I don’t know if I was even close to being kibble but the fear of it was enough.

Breakfast was oatmeal which our lovely kitchen staff had put the name PAN on the top of in cinnamon. Fun! After breakfast, Sameul took me on a tour of the grounds to point out all the different types of trees. Mango, cinnamon, avacado, papaya and the banana grove. It’s like living in a tropical orchard.
For the morning, most of the team went into the city to visit a children’s centre that is being opened for special needs kids.
Mary, Mabel and I stayed behind to get the glasses and supplies reorganized and ready for the clinic in the afternoon.
We were also left in charge of the laundry which is an challenge. They do have a fairly modern machine but it takes forever to fill with water so you have to have a bucket brigade to get it going, then again during the rinse. But after you hang them in the sunshine and they are almost dry before the next load is done.
It was good to re organize and just hang out for the morning. The rest of the team was back for lunch and then our patients were showing up for the afternoon clinic. It was a change to have people coming to us instead of going out into the villages.
Generally, it was a fairly typical crowd until Oscar came along. He is from the local church and gifted musically. However, he was known as being blind and would hold his phone up to his nose to see it.
Mary tried to refract him with the desktop refractor but couldn’t get a reading. I then tried with the hand held but no luck. It was time for a manual assessment. He couldn’t see anything on the chart so I started with -4.00 and started working up. Finally at -9.00, Oscar was seeing 20/40 for the first time in his 32yrs. He was pointing out the trees and leaves he could see for the first time. It was amazing.
Today was just a small local clinic so we finished with 22 patients happily seeing the world clearly again
Finally, the afternoon brought a few hours of down time to just relax, read and hang out with the team. As always, it great to get to know some wonderful people and for them to understand what opticians do and the importance of great vision. A few team members helped us with some reorganization and re-packaging of glasses. He then comment that he was amazed at how many "codes" there were for glasses. He was referring to the RX powers!
We all have a lot to learn from each other.
Dinner was fried chicken, roasted vegetables and fried green bananas made by one of the nurses on our team, Kat. We have been very blessed to have a great crew looking after us at the compound. Martha even got fitted with a beautiful frame from my colleague and friend, Deborah from Saskatoon, SK. She is always so generous in donating incredible high end frames and people are so grateful to get them.
It’s been a quiet evening to settle into. Tomorrow is a day off from optical duties but we have some exploring to do. I’m looking forward to a day of adventures.


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