Eye Clinics in the bush

A few weeks ago we hosted a team of 4 from Hunter Street Baptist Church in Hoover, AL. They visited Abeche and we spent 3 nights in the village doing eye clinics. The team included an optometrist, Brian, an old friend of ours. In fact, he was the one who invited me (Josh) on my first trip to Senegal, where I met Kimberly and initially considered doing mission work full-time. Quite an eventful trip, I am forever indebted to Brian for that invitation!

Ok (shakes head and snaps out of daydream), back to 2020.

The team arrived on February 12th, and after a day to recover in the capital we headed out by car for the 900km trip to Abeche. Three of the four team members are old hats, having traveled all over West Africa. Regardless, they were good sports and we had an uneventful trip, which is the best kind here in Chad.

We spent the weekend in Abeche, just resting and preparing for our trip to the village. The kids enjoyed having some new activities to play with Mrs. Nancy and Mr. Wayne. Our friend Fatime took the visitors to the Abeche market. Sunday morning we went out to the hills just outside of town. It was great to spend a couple of days showing them our town.

Monday morning early we loaded up and headed out to the village. We had two vehicles, with 10 adults and 5 children. Another worker friend of ours came along in order to do a test on a well near the village, where he’s doing a project to replace an old broken foot pump with a solar-powered electrical pump.

We arrived in the village around lunchtime on Monday, and took Monday afternoon to set up and plan how the clinic would work. All day Tuesday and Wednesday we did eye clinics, with the doctor seeing around 300 people. Many had cataracts and he could only refer them to one of the larger towns for surgery. Lot’s of eyes had been damaged by trauma, usually thorns. The thorns in Chad are often several inches long and can puncture the sole of your shoe, so you can imagine what it would do to an eyeball. We were able to help some with glasses, and most people went away with a bottle or two of artificial tears at least. The desert sun, winds and sand are really tough on eyes!

After finishing the clinic on Wednesday afternoon we rode down to the wadi (a seasonal riverbed) where we enjoyed the huge mango and guava trees. We came upon a family of monkeys playing high in the branches of one particular mango tree, and as we stood below watching they threw several mangoes at us.

Thursday morning it was back to Abeche after saying goodbye to the village and promising that we would indeed be back, but it will be after our time in the U.S. this year. We enjoyed our last afternoon and evening with the team in Abeche, and Friday morning they flew back to N’Djamena with MAF. That night they started the long journey back to the U.S.