Update
A photo caption in the print version of this story misidentified Aiden Pearce as his cousin, Evan Logan, based on information from the Logan family. The person in red examining the youth in yellow is in fact Pearce, not Logan. The Gazette apologizes for the confusion.
Evan Logan doesn’t need glasses.
But the people he saw in Malawi last month clearly did. Some had spectacles with sticks or elastic bands for frames. Others had to hold papers at arms-length just to read them.
He recalled how astonished one man was when he handed him a pair of donated glasses and tried them on.
“It’s not blurry anymore!” the man exclaimed.
“I can see the letters! That one is ‘A’ and that one is an ‘H’!”
Logan, a Grade 9 student at St. Albert’s Hillgrove School, was part of a team of 20 volunteers who went to Malawi last April 18–May 5 with Canadian Vision Care to provide free vision care to people in need. He spoke with the Gazette about his trip on May 14.
Far from home
Established in 1981, Canadian Vision Care (CVC) is a Calgary-based non-profit that provides free eye exams, glasses, and eye surgeries to hundreds of thousands of people in Africa, Costa Rica, Guyana, Jamaica, and the Philippines.
Jason Pearce, a Calgary-based optometrist and Logan’s uncle, has volunteered for the group for about 25 years and sits on the group’s board.
“We’re pretty fortunate to live in Canada and have the care we need to take care of our eyes and vision,” he said; this group was one way to repay that fortune to those who needed it.
Pearce typically takes University of Waterloo optometry students and family members with him during his overseas missions with CVC. This year, he invited Logan to come along.
Logan rallied St. Albert earlier this year to collect some 1,400 glasses for the trip, which turned out to be way more than was needed. Pearce said his team picked several hundred of those glasses and combined them with other donations to come up with about 1,500 to distribute. The rest of Logan’s glasses will be used on future CVC missions and distributed through the Lions International Recycle for Sight program.
University of Waterloo optometry student Abarnaa Arithas was also on the trip — one of the eight students at her school who earned a spot on the team through her volunteer efforts.
“It seemed like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” she said, and she was excited to see Africa.
Logan said his journey to Africa involved 20 hours of flying to travel to Amsterdam, Nairobi, and Malawi, followed by six hours of driving to get to the team’s first stop near the city of Mzuzu.
Pearce said roads in the region were terrible, with a 150 km trip taking about six hours.
“Roads, question mark?” was a good way to describe them, agreed Arithas, as they often resembled swamps.
“There were a lot of moments we were a little worried the van would tip over.”
The roads were mostly dirt, rocks, and potholes that were about two feet across and just as deep, Logan said. He and the team were crammed into a 12-seat van stuffed with suitcases full of equipment, with more gear lashed to the roof. Logan said he would sometimes see about 40 Malawians riding in the back of a banged-up truck and wonder how they could possibly do so given the terrain.
Outside the van was a land of red dirt, huge rolling hills, and lush vegetation, with monkeys in the trees and fluorescent yellow or green birds flitting by, Logan said. The team saw a lion, some hippos, and an elephant in a nature preserve as well. Arithas said it was pretty hot most days (temperatures in Malawi in April range from 16–26 C, weatherspark.com reports).
Most of those villages had square concrete or brick buildings with tin roofs along with some wooden shacks, said Logan, Arithas, and Pearce. Electricity, cars, and phones were rare, while bicycles were commonplace. The team slept in local inns under mosquito nets and haggled with roadside merchants for drinks and souvenirs.
Next patient, please
The team held nine vision clinics in nine villages during the trip, examining some 1,453 people and distributing 431 glasses, with a further 94 to be custom made and delivered later, Logan said.
Malawi is one of the poorest countries on Earth, with most residents unable to afford eyeglasses or an optometrist visit, Pearce said. He and the team would arrive on site at about 8 a.m. to a line of hundreds of patients, and work non-stop until about 4 p.m. to see as many as possible.
“We don’t even really stop for a lunch break,” he said.
Arithas said these clinics were usually held in local health centres or hospitals. All their patients were extremely kind and patient, especially given the long wait-times. Those who were fluent in English often stepped up to translate for others.
Logan said his job was to help patients fill out forms and do basic vision tests with an eye chart or diagnostic camera. He also handed out glasses and administered pupil-dilating eyedrops for the more advanced eye exams.
Pearce said most of the patients they saw had never seen an optometrist before. Some needed glasses, while others had infections, parasites, cataracts, or glaucoma.
Logan said he saw two girls at the clinics who were completely blind, and one woman whose eyes were entirely red due to disease. Some had lazy eye, and one was missing an eye.
Arithas said she was saddened to see how the vision problems many patients had could have been prevented with sunglasses — a simple fix that was out of reach to many in Malawi.
Pearce said the team gave glasses to patients that needed them, and arranged surgeries for others at the optical school in Mzuzu that CVC helped establish.
Arithas spoke of the “aha!” moment one woman had when she put on her new glasses and saw clearly for what was likely the first time in her life, and of other patients who simply needed a bit of help to read the Bible.
“Just giving them a pair of reading glasses, instantly that problem was solved, which was really rewarding,” she said.
Logan said the students at a local school the team visited were fascinated by what they were doing and clapped with joy whenever someone got a pair of glasses. The students were also intrigued by the team’s skin tones, with many waving and shouting, “Bye, white people, bye!” when they left.
“It was hilarious. They would all think we were the coolest people.”
Pearce said these clinics were exhausting but rewarding work, as you know by the end that you’d helped a lot of people. He hoped the trip had inspired an interest in philanthropy and vision care in his fellow volunteers.
Arithas said the trip had affirmed to her the importance of vision care, and inspired her to try and arrange a similar clinic in her parent’s hometown in Sri Lanka.
“As humans, we all have some basic rights,” she said, and healthy vision was essentially to fully enjoy many of those rights. That makes vision care a human rights issue — one Canada should use its skill in optometry to protect.
Logan said he felt proud to have helped others on this trip, and had new appreciation for the lifestyle he enjoyed here in Canada.
“We’re so lucky to be here, and what we see as normal [here] could be out of this world in Malawi,” he said, noting how some of the homes he saw there could fit in his living room in St. Albert.
Logan said he hoped to go on further volunteer missions with CVC.
“The experience was just out of this world.”
