Visionaries

September 2009, Nairobi

I am at the Lions SightFirst Eye Hospital in Loresho with my friend and fellow photographer, Sir Mohinder Dhillon. Sir Dhillon (known as Mo to his friends) has started a personal campaign to raise money for the hospital, having benefited from the hospital himself. He has asked me along to make photos, and is my nature, I jump at every chance to see another side of Kenyan life. I have never been to an eye hospital, and certainly never in an operating theatre where repairing peoples vision, bringing sight back to the elderly, was just a routine day. Of the 250,000 sight impaired people in Kenya, 130,000 could have their sight significantly improved with routine surgery (cataracts, cornea transplants).

We are led through a courtyard, headed towards the prep and operating rooms. Many people are milling about, most elderly, some sitting in rows on benches out of the sun. It’s a touching, and pardon me, humorous scene. I looks like I have stumbled upon a convention of retired pirates, almost all of the forty or so people wearing a bandage over one eye. There seems to be comfort in numbers here as everyone has at least one very important thing in common, and there seems to be a slight air of relief as these are post-surgery folks.

I am required to don surgical garments to enter the operating theatre. Entering through a swinging door, I am in a dimly lit room, full of modern medical gear, five beds ready for patients. Having been prepped in another room, patients are led in, asked to sit until their turn comes. There is anticipation on the faces of those just arriving, already under the influence of local anesthetic. When your turn comes, you lie on the bed, your body covered with a clean blue sheet, entirely covered but for a small hole to expose the prepared eye. One technician does the preparation, making the patient comfortable. The surgeon positions themselves over a microscope above the patients head, looking into the eye. With everything else covered, the eye becomes a thing on its own, shining under the intense, focused light. Needles and scalpels go to work in skilled hands. And in five minutes it’s over. Next. The patient is bandaged by another staff member and escorted out of the room to a recovery area, then to the courtyard. In the operating room, the doctors are well on their way with the next patient. I was told that on a busy day Dr. Jyotee Trivedy and her colleagues perform as many as one hundred operations. Yes, one hundred. As I exit the hospital through the incoming waiting room I see there is no lack of candidates. The waiting room is full, the hallways into the main hospital lined with a
row of people sitting in chairs along the length of a long wall. There is apprehension in the air here. After all, it is a hospital. I wish I could tell them all that it will be okay. I have been on the inside, and seen the results in the courtyard beyond.

(Dr. Fiyaz Khan is the chief surgeon at the Lion SightFirst Eye Hospital. In the operating theatre I had the opportunity to watch the skilled hands of Dr. Jyotee Trivedy and the support staff work their magic. Private and corporate sponsors as well as various global organizations provide the funding needed to offer the hospital services and financial assistance to those who need it. It’s about making a difference in Kenya.)