Laayoune, Morocco: The Gift of Sight

One of the main purposes of travelling is to see new things, new places, new people. The best memories that we bring back are photographs, in color or black and white. Now imagine how different travelling would be without the ability to see properly…

In 2010, I participated in a humanitarian trip to Morocco with VOSH, a non-profit organization providing eye care to the less fortunate worldwide. The local population is a mixture of Moroccans from the north and some Berber tribes from the Western Saharan desert. Communication was a great challenge as our team is formed of mainly English or French speaking volunteers. Luckily, many locals were willing to volunteer to translate Arabic for us.

To make the process efficient, stations were set up starting from waiting line to be examined, then screening, examination and finally dispensing the lenses. The first days, the waiting area was inside the building but the traffic became so dense that most people ended up waiting outside, where a tent needed to be installed.

Waiting area set up under the tent outside, ready to receive several hundreds of people per day.

Order is maintained even with this large number of people.

Dispensary: holding the thousands of used glasses we brought from Canada.

We ended up seeing several thousands of people in our ten days stay. Every day starts at around 7 am, when the sun is barely up, with breakfast in a small restaurant nearby the hotel. A bus picks us up to head to the building where the examination facilities are set up. Around noon, we take turns for a quick lunch break. Around 6 pm, the bus driver brings us back to the hotel. Throughout the duration of the trip, we felt extremely well taken cared of by the authorities. Transport, meals and comfortable lodging were provided. In the end, the mission was a success entirely due to the wonderful teamwork of eye doctors, students, translators and other important volunteers. This is when I came to realize that the greatest gift is to give: being able to provide service for the people who are in need proved to be an extremely enriching experience.

Backyard of the building where we spent our lunch breaks.

To thank us, one of the last meals is an entire roasted lamb. The sight of it could have been a little overwhelming for some of us, but we appreciated the thought greatly.

Loraine, one of our volunteers, with a satisfied patient.

Another young patient with her first pair of glasses.

Colin, a volunteer optometry student with one of the cutest patients

After the end of the mission, we stayed behind a few days to visit the area and other cities of the country. We started by exploring Laayoune, the city we volunteered in but had no time to visit during the mission. We then took a flight to Casablanca, Marrakesh and Fes, stories I will share in a later post.

Laayoune is a relatively small and quiet city, in the middle of the Saharan desert. Its main attractions were the sand dunes and the beaches of the west coast. We had the opportunity to attend a football game opposing the Laayoune team against the capital Rabat’s.