A Cambodian Spectacle

Once, when teaching at a shelter for girls in a quiet, rural area of Cambodia we discovered that some of the staff there had eyesight problems.

The sewing-instructor was, literally, as blind as a bat; the nurse was long-sighted and one, obviously near-sighted driver, had no business being behind the wheel of his own motorcycle let alone couriering some of the girls to and from school. Careful observation revealed that several of the students had sight problems, too.

A spectacle-shopping expedition showed us that an eye-test and a pair of prescription glasses costs as little as US$8 in Phnom Penh. That doesn’t seem like much, yet even at that price glasses remain well out of reach for most Cambodians and certainly for these workers and students.

So we resolved to fix the problem and a week later our near-sighted driver managed to get himself, the nurse, the sewing-instructor, three students and ourselves safely to a Phnom Penh optometrist. Also along for the ride was the centre’s second driver who insisted on coming as he had, he was certain, less than perfect eyesight.

Some hours later, after six eye-tests, countless fittings and the seemingly endless process of trying on frames, the nurse, driver number one, instructor and students could now, much to their excitement, see clearly. All that remained was for driver number two to complete his test and receive his result from the optometrist.

That didn’t take long and soon the excited driver burst out exclaiming that the test had confirmed what he already knew; he did indeed need glasses. It turned out though that driver number two wasn’t short or near sighted, nor did he have astigmatism or glaucoma. Rather he had, like most of us, eyes that had minor sun damage. The optometrist had recommended he get sunglasses!

We didn't have the heart to turn him down and after much preening in front of the mirror driver number two had a seriously cool looking pair of sunnies. And, in his mind at least, his eyes were now functioning perfectly again.

This was the best sixty dollars we had ever spent; six eyesight problems had been fixed, everyone was beaming with delight and pride and soon we would all be tucking into some weird Cambodian ice cream to celebrate the success.

Later, driver number two got behind the wheel and with back ram-rod straight our now cocky, sunglasses wearing friend  flashed admiring glances at himself in the rear-vision mirror all the way home.