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This morning we got something great in the mail. The folks at Light for the World sent us a very nice letter of appreciation for your help with their initiative to help doctors in Kenya. Read about Dr. Catherine Kareko Wamuyu and what her motivation to become an eye doctor is!
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See our new LomoKikuyu microsite with your very own eyes! The cause hasn't changed, but we are making change happen and believed a microsite makeover was in store. We'd love for you to share this easy to navigate site, with all information contained on one single page, with your friends, as well as good willed strangers!
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Having got this far in the book you are now well-informed: You know who Gikuyu and Mumbi are, you feel a sense of kinship with Mrs Schmidt and Mr Lopez, you know what a cataract is, how the operation works, how people in the whole of East Africa are being helped by jeep and plane, what the Kikuyu Eye Unit does, how it helps, and most of all how your contribution is best invested there. Which leads us to the hottest of issues: your money!
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Find out how you, your family, and friends can help efforts currently underway to better the lives of those in Somalia and bordering countries and to eventually put an end to the ongoing food crisis in East Africa.
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In the meantime, the whole fuss about eyesight, Kikuyu, safaris and cataracts has set you a-thinking. How do the people here in the rich parts of the world find out that the sick in Kenya need our help? Who donates to whom? And what exactly is Light for the World? More and more questions are partially answered at www.lomography.com/kikuyu.
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The thought that such an eye clinic probably costs a fair whack must surely have flickered through your mind. So how does the Kikuyu Eye Unit support itself?
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The demand for surgeons, assistants and nurses is rising steadily with the spread of information about the ways eye disorders can be healed.
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Not all areas can be reached by jeep. Some areas are so far away or so remote that driving there would take too long, and they can only be reached by plane. In such cases it is not possible to undergo largely planned preliminary examinations and to take the patients who need surgery to Kikuyu a week later as would normally be the case in the Outreach Programme.
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Lo and behold the prizes, which are 2 fold like our Lomo Kikuyu project! They are both prizes, or gifts, to you and to someone for whom the 'gift of sight' is the ultimate gift!
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Many roads lead to Kikuyu. The word has spread among the visually afflicted of Kenya, and no small number have heard at some point of the eye clinic near Nairobi – and even found their way there by themselves to receive excellent treatment and be cured (as already described). But there are still also an enormous number of people who have difficulty seeing or are completely blind in Kenya who have never even heard of the Kikuyu Eye Unit.
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Wow! That's the sound that follows as a truly amazed member of the Lomography team checks how many Kikuyu Books have been purchased over the last 2 weeks - a grand total of 219, which amounts to over 1300 EUR/USD raised!
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Back to Kikuyu. You know now what this is about, and you can imagine why it is so extremely important to dedicate so much attention and financial resources to combating eye diseases and blindness. The Kikuyu Eye Unit plays a key role for the whole of Kenya! That it costs money, even though considerably less than it would here in the industrialised countries, is clear. As is the fact that there is still not enough money for it in these countries, either.
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Many children go blind due to vitamin A deficiency as the result of malnutrition. In many parts of Africa families simply do not have the wherewithal to nourish themselves properly, and they suffer from vitamin deficiency as a result.
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The cataract is neither the beginning nor the end of this story. There are many more illnesses, and a shocking number of people afflicted by them.
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Some of us know cataracts from our grandparents. They see badly, then worse, and the assembled kinsfolk mumble something about a cataract self-pityingly. This creeping, gradual worsening of vision, the cataract, has a dramatic name for good reason.
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For the many who bear the burden of a cataract, the journey to an eye clinic to get the much needed surgery is one that spans many years. For the average patient, who is older and already has impaired vision, the quick surgery is a long time coming.
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First of all, the Kikuyu are the largest Ethnic group in Kenya. They live in many parts of a country that is about the same size as Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Germany put together. The Kikuyu live mainly from farming just like a major proportion of the population of Kenya. Legend has it that the name comes from a man who lived many hundreds of years ago called Gikuyu.
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Between 34 and 42 degrees east, 5 degrees north and 5 degrees south (bang on the equator!) is where you will find Kenya.
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Discover, recognise, understand, red, green, blue, purple, focused, blurry, bright, dark, small, big, below, above, crooked, slanted, wide-awake, dead tired, colourful, pitch-black, pink, fascinating, illuminating, embarrassing, exhilarating, incomprehensible, extraordinary, peculiar, inverted, twisted, singular and a whole lot more: Eyes can take in and be all of this, sight can mean all of this.
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Read up and learn more about this special Lomography project.
