Optometry Giving Sight

18 year old Donglian had never had her eyes checked before a local team of eye care professionals came to her school in a poor, remote mountainous area of Lechang province. Although she had blurred vision sometimes, she hadn’t told her teacher as she was the type of girl who never liked to complain about things. But someone was watching over her, watching her struggle – a classmate who had been sitting near her told the teacher that Donglian was having difficulty seeing properly. Although Donglian was not one to make a fuss, her close friends also felt it was their duty to speak up. “As her classmates, we should help her. In addition, she is a good friend to me,” one of them said.

The teacher arranged a seat for Donglian closer to the blackboard in the front row, rather than the third row where she used to sit. She was happy to do this for a little girl she described as one of the best eight students in her class.

“She is really sensible and always cares about her classmates and family,” the teacher said.

When talking about Donglian, her teacher referred to an old saying that “Children in poor families mature at an early age.” Although still young, Donglian has not had an easy life – her mother passed away when she was just a year old and her father has some mental health problems, sometimes to the point where he is unable to take care of himself. With her home being quite a distance from the school, Donglian used to live in the dormitory, but sometimes her father had nothing to eat, so she had to move back home to take care of him, walking for two hours there and back every day. She now has to find time to study and take care of her father as well. She has no brothers and sisters to share the load.

While her father can still do some farming when he’s relatively well, Donglian also needs to do her bit on their three hectares of land, working from 7 to 11 every morning before she goes to school. Each year in Spring they sow peanut, corn, soya bean and sweet potato and the soil needs to be turned before planting – there is only Donglian and her father to do all this work. She studies in the living room of her modest home, where awards and certificates on the wall tell the story of her achievements to date - excellent student leader, excellent young pioneer – despite her vision problems. Things got a little easier for her after they saved up to buy a new lamp – it had been very dark in the living room and her eyes hurt after she did her homework for a while.

When Donglian realised that her vision was blurred, she didn’t even consider taking the long journey to a clinic or to the hospital to have her eyes checked and get a pair of glasses because there was no money for that. Although a short-sighted friend of hers was given a pair of glasses at a charity event at the school, at the time she didn’t think her vision was bad enough to ask for a pair herself.

Although Donglian is a bright student, her teacher feels she would have been much better if the school had known about her poor vision a couple of years earlier.

“The blackboard is what we used for teaching. If she cannot see the blackboard clearly, she can listen to the teachers in the class only. I believe her study would have been much better, and I believe her study will be better in the future if her vision was improved now,” she said.

Donglian was happy that the eye care team came to her school on that day. After screening thousands of children like her, they returned later to deliver specially made glasses for those who needed them. Now she can really concentrate on her studies and try to make up for lost time. Despite her difficult circumstances she now has the opportunity to fulfil the potential she has already shown in her young life.

Just $5 can provide an eye exam and a pair of glasses for someone like Donglian.