Giving back to the community: ‘Enriching, humbling’ and rewarding

When I travelled to Acornhoek, Mpumalanga, last week to cover a story about volunteer doctors who offer free cataract surgeries, I did not expect to find myself assisting the patients, their families and the doctors at the Tintswalo Hospital.

The small town is on the border of Limpopo and Mpumalanga but due to its isolation, the rural hospital – which is far away from schools and cities – required all the help it could get.

I was invited by the Tshemba Foundation, a local organisation that saw the need to donate millions of rands in revamping the hospital.

They took an old house on the property and converted it into an eye clinic equipped with high-end technology. An old storeroom at the hospital was installed with air conditioning and state-of-the-art machines and is now the operating theatre.

The ophthalmic surgeon whom I had come to see, Dr Sachin Bawa, had left his family and private practice in Johannesburg yet again to give back to this community – an experience he has described as “enriching” and “humbling”.

I was warned by Tshemba Foundation chief executive Barbara McGorian of how aiding those in need could easily become an addiction. She said this was the reason people like Bawa kept coming back.

She was right.

In my three days at Tintswalo Hospital, I found myself spending a lot of time with the patients, particularly the elderly, who were not only blind, but confused due to lack of understanding of their upcoming procedure and what would be expected of them.

They shared their life stories and their struggles with blindness while we spoke and laughed. This seemed to calm their nerves as they waited outside the theatre, barefooted and in their green or orange hospital gowns.

I immediately gravitated towards Josephine Mhlongo, a 67-year-old grandmother who was taken care of by her 18-year-old granddaughter.

She said the remainder of her six grandchildren did not bother to call or visit her since she lost three of her four children. Her surviving daughter is married and living in Gauteng.

Mhlongo’s vision had completely deteriorated, with her left eye completely blind and her right eye “going dead” last year following a botched cataract surgery in 2017.

I made sure to sit next to her in the theatre and occasionally asked, on behalf of Bawa, if she was doing fine while he broke the cataract in her eye to replace it with an artificial lens.

As a lot of the patients at the eye clinic were elderly and mostly spoke xiTsonga and Sepedi, I was again assisting in translating for the doctors and sometimes trying to locate the patient’s relatives to explain which medication they are instructed to take and when.

The addiction McGorian had warned me about had already seeped in.

Despite my trip coming to an end on Saturday, I did not want to leave. Seeing the patients walk out of the eye clinic with smiles on their faces as they could see again, brought a warm feeling to my heart.

I then remembered the words of Bawa: “I think everyone has some sort of humanity and humility and everyone wants to do something for everyone else.”

Now read: FEATURE: Free cataract surgeries changing lives in Mpumalanga town