Donating Eyejusters in South Sudan, Part Two

Once we felt confident with our vision testing skills we got to work testing some people in Wudu.

We started with the WHI team. They were drilling a well at a nearby school so we went over to check their vision. 

There aren't really a lot of buildings large enough or with good enough lighting to perform vision test indoors so we tested al fresco, using the LandCruiser as our wall. Fortunately the sky was cloudy that day so harsh sunlight was not a problem.

All the members of the WHI crew had pretty good vision and none of them needed glasses.

One of the children's mothers was around so we tested her as well. It was a little tricky because the children really wanted to be a part of it, and obviously we want the subject to do the test without others helping them.

You might be wondering why we didn't test any of the children that were hanging around us. Unfortunately the Eyejusters are not suitable for children under the age of twelve. 

***

Once that was done we went over to the Darfurian refugees who live across the road from the compound. They were very eager to get their vision tested.

We set up two testing stations, one on each side of the LandCruiser. We tested as many as we could, until the sun set and no-one could see the charts anymore, regardless of their vision.

Now this part gets sad.

The last person I tested was a 20 year old man named Moses. He was very enthusiastic and all smiles.

I pointed to the top line of the distance vision chart. He said he couldn't see it. I tried encouraging him. he smiled, looked at the people standing around him and said "No, I can't see it".

Great....I was stuck with the joker of the group. This kid must be having fun at my expense, but I am tired and I just want to go back to the compound. I looked over at Lars to see if he had any suggestions.

We figured we'd let him try some glasses and go from there. He was still smiling. The Eyejusters helped him some, but not enough. He was able to see the symbols down to the 5th line. It's an improvement, but still far from good.

Then I looked over at Moses and I saw that he was really sad. That's when I realized that he was not trying to have a laugh at all. He had just been really hopeful. And now he was devastated.

I felt like such a cynical bitch for thinking the worst of him. It was really hard knowing we could not help him properly. He had waited patiently while the others were tested and helped. Then when it was finally his turn the magic stopped, and he would not get the help he had hoped for.

On the way home I cried.

Now why would I choose to tell this story? It's a sucky story that does not paint the prettiest picture of the author.

Well, I am hoping that there might still be some way to help him. The Eyejusters maximum negative power is 4,5. If anyone reading this has a pair of old glasses that they are not using anymore with a higher negative power, I would love to get my hands on them. I'll send them to the MHI crew and they can go over to Moses and try them out. Any pair that ends up not being used will be donated to an organization that works with used glasses. Let me know by commenting or writing an email to karmoie@karmoie.com.

Lots of love, K

Donating Eyejusters in South Sudan, Part One

Let me start off by apologizing for taking forever to get this post up. I won't go into all the reasons I could give to justify this delay. We have so much to show and tell, so I have decided to divide it up into several posts. This makes the task of organizing all our footage and telling the story in a good way feel somewhat less daunting for me :)


I won't give you a day-by-day play-by-play of our trip. Quite frankly that would probably be of little interest to anyone other than my mother - Hei Mamma! :)


This post will mostly be about project planning.


As I have mentioned in previous posts we were partnering with East African Ministries to provide glasses in the area of Kajo Keji in Central Equatoria. EAM is the umbrella organization for the Radler Foundation's three East African initiatives: Water Harvest International, Mobile Health International and Leadership Development International. 


Kristen Hansen works for EAM and was in charge of coordinating our efforts (Kirsten and Kristen, that was pretty confusing... :)). She is so friendly, sweet and funny and great at her job! 


We had 270 pairs of eyejusters as well as 300 pairs of reading glasses to donate*.

Norma (middle), Opoka (right) and I (left) carrying the eyejusters out of the car. Opoka drove to the Ugandan border to pick up the glasses. Twice! The first day the bus carrying the shipment had broken down on the way and got delayed. When Opoka got back to the compund on the second day he told me: "Again and again I drive over there for nothing..." I almost started crying :) However Opoka can't keep his big smile in for very long. I was pretty relieved :)

We only had a week in South Sudan so to make the most of our time there we decided it would be best to prioritize training the local staff to dispense Eyejusters. They would be more efficient than us because most of them speak the local language. Also, there was no way we would be able to dispense all the 270 pairs of eyejusters in less than one week, so it was very important to make sure they would feel ready to take over when we left.

Training!

That was a pretty easy job :) They are very bright and really fast learners.

Kirsten the guinea pig :) Lars explains the near vision test to (from left) Violet, Richard and Gloria.

Kristen and I shot some film of Richard, Gloria and Violet practising. I have tried editing it, but this is my first time using iMovie so don't expect anything fancy :)

Gloria wearing her eyejusters

Kristen, Lars and I worked exclusively on testing vision and dispensing glasses. The rest of the people we trained on the MHI and WHI teams alternated between their regular duties and donating glasses.


Lots of love, K


* To clarify, we always donate eyejusters on behalf of our customers, the cost of the reading glasses for this project was covered by Lars and I personally. This is because we want to make sure the eyejusters go to people who really need that technology. A lot of people over the age of 40 just require a simple pair of reading glasses.

Club

Club, Moss

Lars and I are children of the eighties. We just couldn't make a collection without an homage to our childhood's decade. I could drone on about these frames as I have about some of the others, but I will keep it short and sweet (well, relatively).

When I think of the glasses of the eighties I think of oversized, roundish, "power women" frames.  

Like these!

And these!

Now, while I do love those types of frames, and I would wear them, I did not see the fun in just finding a pair of vintage shades and copying them exactly. Also, I wanted to find a way to make them more current. So I slimmed them down and gave them a more neutral color palette.

Club, Beach

In the end they didn't turn out as obviously eighties-inspired as I had thought when I started drawing them. But I am very pleased with the results. In losing the distinctive eighties look they gained a timelessness that works well for such a delicate and feminine frame. Club, Black

The "Club" is available in four colors: - Black - Beach - River - Moss Club, River Lots of love, K PS This post was supposed to go up last week. However, internet in Kajo Keji can be somewhat patchy. I was just finishing up getting all the pictures in the right places and that had been a time-consuming endeavor as the internet was acting particularly temperamental that day when it completely gave up on me. I panicked and tried to save, refresh, copy to a word file and cross my fingers all at once. Then a few moments later when I got a few minutes online I realized that I had lost nearly all of it. Argh! (in fact I cussed a good deal - in Norwegian to avoid offending our gracious hosts) So here I am a good ten days later giving it another go because for the rest of our time in Africa my internet connection was not good enough to blog. We have had an amazing time and I will tell you all about it. Right now, though, I am have a bit of tummy trouble (I think I swallowed a little too much Nile water when we went rafting on our transit day in Kampala) so everything is moving at a very slow pace...