2010 Fighting Blindness in Ethiopia's Arba Minch Eye Mission
The 2010 Mission of fighting blindness in Ethiopia continued its annual programme further afield to the southern part of the country to Arba Minch town in the province of Gamu Goffa. Even though we did not hit our target in numbers it was a very successful mission. As always there were some problems on the way but we believed that what God want us to achieve for these poor people has been done.
We were well prepared to treat at least over three hundred people so we took enough supplies with us for these tasks. Alas when we arrived in Addis Ababa Airport unusual circumstances which we had never experienced awaited us. It took me one whole day to go and argue our case that we had simply come to help and that all our equipment was sterilised ready to be used on patients who were waiting for us at Arba Minch. Because of this scenario some of us missed our flight to our destination. By the time we got our luggage through there was only ten minutes to get to the departure gate for Arba Minch. By the time we got there half of the team had gone through the gate while five of us missed our flight. We planned alternative roads. If you cannot run, try to walk! We had to get to Arba Minch by any means so we hired a lorry to take all our supplies. The team hired a car and drove to Hosaina without eating and arrived at midnight. When we arrived at Hosaina there were no rooms in any of the hotels so we drove around the town till about one in the morning when we found a very shabby place. They gave us some Injera and Wott for which we were very grateful.
On the morning of the same day we went to bed and woke up at seven, unable to even get a drop of water to wash. Then we started our journey to Arba Minch. We were determined to get there and help those who were waiting to be helped. We arrived at about one o’clock in the afternoon. Guess what? We booked into one of the very good tourist hotels but there was no water! We were more desperate to have something to eat than to get washed and be clean.
Failure of Communication. We had been sending emails and telephone calls to three different people saying that we would only deal with patients with cataract blindness. This message was not carried on the media. After arriving in Arba Minch and a quick grab of something to eat we went up to the hospital. I saw some patients but not in big numbers as we used to see in other places we have been to. I thought that maybe they went away to come in the morning. We got to the hospital and after introducing ourselves we started to set up our equipment. We were ready to do some work but as there were few patients we headed to our hotel to prepare for the next day.
I personally was disappointed that there was the great number of patients overflowing as we were accustomed to seeing. The majority were not cataract patients for which we were prepared. We started operating on Sunday morning. By the time we came to Tuesday we were running out of patients. So on Wednesday and Thursday we started to operate on the patients' second eyes, which was not usually our policy.
On Thursday afternoon and Friday morning we went sightseeing before we flew back to Addis. At the end of all this we were very happy to see 209 people's lives changed for the rest of their days. It was worth every thing that had happened to us on the way to help all these poor farmers.
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