December 19, 2011 (Jeremiah Was A Bullfrog)

“Are you going to tell us a real update, or just show us more pictures?” -Anonymous

This was in my inbox this morning. Fantastic. Maybe my laziness has finally caught up to me…hmm…nope. Some people (me), don’t like reading things longer than it takes me to shit. Sooooooo, with that said. Here’s a real update!

We just got back from Bakel, the far north east of Senegal. The gateway to the ever pleasant country of Mauritania. Generally, Bakel is said to be the asscrack of nowheres-ville Senegal (because it is), but what’s not generally known is that it’s surprisingly beautiful. Seriously. Hills creep upwards and give great views of the rolling hills of Mauritania, the Senegal river somehow snakes its way through, and best of all, Dairy Queens scattered on every corner!…Okay, no Dairy Queen, but it was still pretty spectacular. We were there because the eye clinic came back. Right to Sight and Health posted up there for 2 weeks, removing cataracts, screening for glaucoma, and fitting people with eyeglasses. Volunteers were there again as translators and helped run other general busywork.

As it was last year, people crawled out the woodwork to get there eyes fixed up here. But unlike last year, people didn’t stop coming. Waves of people would show up at the gates, slipping through side doors, packing the hallways, hoping they’d be the next to see a doctor for some kind of surgery. Unfortunately the doctors couldn’t get to everybody, which made things absolute chaos interesting. Volunteers were tasked to get people to leave the hospital that weren’t getting surgery, which, usually turned into a screaming match interesting. At one point, the hallway looked like a scene ripped from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. A pack of volunteers, shoulder to shoulder, on one side, casting spells at the Dementors who were trying to overtake the hospital. Good lord. It’s a good laugh now, but at the time, I wanted to unlovingly steamroll the lot.

Overall, I think the doctors completed a bit more than 130 cataract removal surgeries. Mostly to people who were completely blind. So maybe I didn’t save the world single handed (today), but it feels pretty damn good to be a volunteer right now.