Dear Friends,
We speak of the eye clinic often and the wonderful work it does bringing sight to the poor of Haiti. Recently two volunteers from Canada worked there and I thought you would enjoy their observations.
My name is Sarah Hamilton, I’m from New Brunswick, Canada, and I’m currently living in Limbe, Haiti for the next 3 months visiting my family who are here with Medical Ambassadors of Canada. I’ve only been here about a week and I am still acclimatizing to the culture and have been meeting a lot of my family’s neighbors and friends. Recently I had the pleasure of meeting Pastor Nzunga and his wife, who are also our neighbors. On Monday January 29, Pastor Nzunga invited me, and my sister to help out at the eye clinic in Cap-Haitian and I jumped at the chance to see how different organizations work. So the following Monday, my sister and I climbed into the truck with Pastor Nzunga and headed out to the clinic. When we arrived at 8 AM, there were over 80 people packed into the waiting room already, and more outside the clinic, and I thought “wow, this is definitely going to take all day”, but to my surprise the organization in the clinic was impeccable, everyone had a job to do, and they pumped the patients through as quickly as possible. The clinic was very clean and organized and the workers were very friendly. My sister and I ended up in a small room working with two other Haitian women, where we fitted patients with reading glasses. One of the women tested the patient’s eyes with optometrist lenses and quickly found the right fit, and passed off the numbers to us, and we dug through bags of reading glasses to find them a pair they liked and placed them into a plastic case. It was a great to watch how happy the patients were when they realized they could read the small flyer sitting on the table without squinting or holding it at arm’s length. The amount of people we saw in 7 hours was incredible; if that had been a North American clinic the doctor probably would have gone home. Overall I believe that this clinic is invaluable to the people of Cap-Haitian. It provides a service that many Haitians would not otherwise be able to afford and provides jobs for the many staff employed at the clinic.
Hi, my name is Priscilla Hamilton, and I’m from New Brunswick, Canada. I’m living in Haiti for 8 months. I recently went to the eye clinic here in Cap-Haitian in Haiti with Pastor Nzunga and my sister Sarah, it was extremely well run and I was very impressed. The people are all very friendly and attend to the patients with lots of care. I was very pleased with how organized everything was in the eye clinic; everyone had a job to do and did it with pride. When I got to the eye clinic there was an extremely long line of people all waiting to have their eyes checked. All I thought was that this is going to take all day. Nzunga took me around the eye clinic and showed me the ins and outs of everything. It was surprising to see how much room they had made in the clinic and how neat everything was. We were then taken to a room and were told that our job that day was going to be helping people pick out reading eye glasses. As each patient came in the small room they would test their eyes then send them to us where we were told what distance they needed and helped them pick out a pair that they liked. Shortly after being placed in the room I was asked to come with Nzunga where he gave me a bunch of candy and told me to go hand it out to everyone waiting. So I walked around and gave chocolates, candy canes, and other candies to people. Everyone was very grateful for the small treat, and for some it might be the only thing that they would eat all day. When I finished that I went back to the room to continue my first job, only once in the whole day did I deal with a Haitian who was upset about not having a nice pair of glasses, it was getting to be the end of the patients and we were running out of nice glasses in the prescription that she needed. The women was saying stuff about me and quickly the employees backed me up and told her not to be rude and that we would help her find a pair that she liked, and we did. We finished up at the clinic around 2 in the afternoon and we had started at 8 in the morning. Through that whole time we had gone through about 120-150 in those 7 hours we saw everyone that came to the eye clinic. I was extremely impressed with how everything ran and how fast it was.
There observations are the same as mine and others who have been there. In Haiti, a place that is clean, orderly, staffed with competent helpful people is a real rarity. It was the only place I have been in Haiti that was similar to the care you would get in the USA, except for the old equipment. We all should be proud of this clinic and the work they are doing.
Blessings,
Dennis Shewell
Mission Partnership Team Communications Advocate and Convener
Nzunga and Kihomi Ministry
E-mail: deshewell@gmail.com
Phone: 812-569-1352