Optometrist Keeps the World in Focus

Archives Admin · #1 (**permalink**) 04-11-2006, 10:33 AM

When she was in Kenya, Tanya Short changed a 25-year-old student's life. Unable to see the board or take notes, the student used to take a tape recorder to class. Then Short prescribed him his first pair of glasses, and he put the recorder away.

"He smiled," Short says.

Telling this story, Short smiles too. A tantalizing smile that suggests you had to be there, in Kakamega, a small dusty town northwest of Nairobi where Short, a Vancouver optometrist, helped hundreds of poor Africans to see.

Another man, this one 82, waited two days to see her. Sadly, when they finally met, she found that his cataracts were so dense there was nothing she could do for him. But he smiled too. At least she had tried.

And so it was for Short, one of six Canadian optometrists in Kakamega last January and February on behalf of the Third World Eye Care Society (TWECS), a Vancouver-based volunteer group that sends donated eye glasses and eye-care specialists to visually-impaired people throughout the developing world.

Often they were able to help, Short says. Elderly women could sew and read and cook again. Children could go to school.

"You get a lot of smiles," Short says. "You get a lot of hugs too. It makes you feel good."

But sometimes because of disease or injury there was nothing they could do. "There's no magic," she says. "Some people who come to see us thought there was, but there isn't."

There also were people whose eyes were fine, but because everyone around them was getting glasses, they wanted a pair too.

And proving that people are people regardless of where they're from, "fashion was important," Short says. A new prescription was one thing, but an ugly pair of frames was another. "Maybe it was the Western influence," she says diplomatically.

It was the third time Short, 33, a Saskatchewan native, who got her first taste of working with the poor when she did a post-grad residency in an Indian eye hospital, had travelled with TWECS. She also has been to Bolivia and Cambodia.

The spectacles she takes with her come from an eye-glass bank TWECS operates in Burnaby. It's where more than 100,000 donated pairs are cleaned, sorted and measured for prescription. Short and her team, which also included three opticians and seven lay volunteers, took 10,000 pairs to Africa.

But when you see as many patients as they did -- each optometrist, working nine- and 10-hour days, saw up to 10 people each hour -- you need that many. After all, demands in Kakamega are no less varied than they are here.

Started 11 years ago by Filipina immigrant and fellow optometrist Marina Roma-March in memory of her grandmother, TWECS has helped thousands of people see again in 11 countries around the world. Its next scheduled expedition is to Tanzania in November.

Roma-March's first trip was to Baja in Mexico. "They were long brutal days," she says. Each optometrist saw about 100 people each day. "But we learned a lot. It was the first time I realized the career I chose could make a difference."

Since then hundreds of B.C. optometrists have come to the same realization.

How you live depends on where you go, Short says. Life in Kakamega was comparatively luxurious. There was electricity -- sometimes -- in her guesthouse, along with running water (also sometimes) and a toilet. In Bolivia she slept on a slatted floor next to the pigs and the chickens.

But it's worth it, Short says, for the adventure, the camaraderie and the knowledge that you're doing something worthwhile.

"I think it's good to give back. I know it sounds a bit hokey, but when you give, you get back a whole lot more."

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Optometrist Keeps the World in Focus

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