Our First Week of Eye Exams

This week was our first week of actually 

performing humanitarian eye exams in Fiji. 

We were very excited as we began doing what we came to do.

My wonderful assistant, Ann,, first put the drops in.

"This won't hurt a bit!"

"Can you read the chart?"

"Which is better, number 1 or number 2....?"

The kids were happy to be missing some class time ...

Ann did a great job measuring their eyes with the Portable High Tech AUTO-REFRACTOR.

The Auto-Refractor measures their eyes to help determine what power of glasses they might need.

Dr. Nielson did Binocular Indirect Ophthalmoscopy to evaluate their retina.

With this system in place, we averaged about 50 eye exams 

per day, working from 9 to 3.  This pace 

sure kept us hopping, but was manageable.

This first week of eye exams was at a church college/high school in Tamavua, just north of Suva.

You can see that the school campus is beautiful, and overlooks the ocean.

It was a nice place to begin our service, before we travel to more remote villages next month.

The Principal of the high school asked us to put on an 80 minute presentation on eyes, and to also include some of life's lessons we've learned over the years.  We spent a number of hours preparing to give this presentation to 420 students and 30 staff.   It seemed to be very well received.

To start things off, the principal of the school, presented us with a "Salu-Salu", as a great honor.  It's similar to an Hawain Lae, but with a Fijian flare to it.  

Then we got into the presentation, providing educational things about eyes, 

with a lot of humor & fun added in.  

As part of an object lesson, at one point, I threw a number of marshmallows out to the audience.  That sure caught their attention, and brought on a some laughs.

Another deep object lesson, when you pick up one end of the stick,
you automatically pick up the other end.

After it was all over, I sat down & played the drums that were on the stage.
I used to play the drums as a teenager, so it was a good "Blast from the Past".

It was great first week of doing eye exams!