VISION 2020: The Right to Sight: October 2009

World Sight Day is around the corner and here at Seva Canada we have a host of local and national events aimed at raising awareness of blindness among girls and women. Our national video contest, Her Sight Is Worth It (http://www.seva.ca/contest.htm), has been featured in Canadian Teacher magazine and the BC Teacher's Federation newsletter. The idea is simple: create a 3-minute video on the topic of gender and blindness. Winners will be featured in the World Community Film Festival in 8 locations across Canada starting in January 2010.

On World Sight Day itself, Seva Canada is having a party. Two hundred people will be attending Seva's Eye Opener Benefit in Vancouver, featuring a 9-piece R&B dance band, a silent auction, door prizes and our special guest, Dr. Paul Courtright, the world expert on gender and blindness. Dr. Courtright arrives this evening in Vancouver and will be in Canada until October 11, where he'll be meeting with government representatives in Ottawa and Vancouver and doing media interviews about his work in Africa with the Kilimanjaro Centre for Community Ophthalmology and the barriers that women and girls face in accessing eye care.

Seva Canada is using World Sight Day as a launching pad for a year-long campaign to raise awareness about the 30 million women and girls who are blind. That is a staggering number... almost the population of Canada. It's been said before that people don't go blind by the millions, but one personal tragedy at a time. Here's a story we just got from the amazing team at Seva Tibet about one of those 30 million tragedies...

Chime Dolkar, blind from bilateral cataracts, has spent the last two years barely surviving by begging on the streets of Nakchu, nomadic town at an elevation of 4500 meters in northern Tibet. Since the age of 4, her little daughter Tashi has led her blind mother by the right hand through the streets, trying to get enough food to keep them both from starving. At night, they would crawl into a small and nearly worn-out tent stationed near a bridge in the upper town.

There were times Tashi, now 6, begged by herself, telling her mother to rest in the tent. Several weeks ago, Tashi was begging on the street where the Civil Affairs office was located when an official, who was aware Chime’s blindness, told the little girl that a Seva medical team from Lhasa would be doing free surgeries for the blind and would be arriving in one week. He encouraged Tashi to talk her mother for treatment.

Tashi ran back to the tent with the great news. Chime reacted rather indifferently from hearing it and responded, “Surgery? Why would I want that? I am destined to become blind. It’s better for me to comply with my fate.” Poor Tashi didn’t really understand that much about destiny, fate and all that complicated hypothesis, and disagreed with her mom by saying, “Nothing is fixed. If you keep trying to change things for the better, what you call ‘fate’ will be different. Why don’t you try the surgery? It’s free. Please give it try, mom, please!”

Chime agreed, counting off the days until the Seva-funded medical team’s arrival. As each day passed, their excitement escalated. When the medical team arrived they diagnosed Chime with bilateral cataracts and on the first day of the camp Chime’s had cataract surgery on her left eye. Later, on the third day, she had surgery on her right eye.

Nothing in her 48 years of life had so transformed Chime’s life as listening to her daughter’s advice and regaining her sight through surgeries. Until then, Chime said that her life was “totally meaningless and a failure”.

The sight-restoration surgery has given Chime new hope and confidence. She is anxious to re-plan both her and Tashi’s life. No longer forced to beg, Chime is planning on asking the local government for a job at the Nakchu train station. Smiling, she says, “I will be very happy if I can work at the railway station…I can work as a garbage cleaner or security guard.” She gazes at Tashi and continues, “Tashi should be going to first grade of elementary school. Wow, life is not that bad after all!”

Her sight IS worth it.