Sight is such a beautiful thing…

[18 December 2009 - 11h02]

Seventeen years old! That’s right – for 17 years now, “Enfants des Sables” (Children of the Sands) in the south of Tunisia has been receiving visits from ophthalmologists and opticians who come to check and adjust children’s glasses. The fact is that some children living between Zarzis and the Great Eastern Sand Sea only discover what the world looks like at around the age of 10…

Sometimes this is an experience on the very edge, explains Professor José-Alain Sahel of the Quinze-Vingt Hospital in Paris. Some of these children, he continues, have never really seen properly before being kitted out. Then suddenly, they discover what their parents’ faces are like, those of their relatives, the countryside around them … When Hasnae received her very first pair of glasses, she was petrified for a few minutes.

Over the course of two weeks, 60 children are fitted with glasses each day: this year, around 900 children went through this extraordinary experience. However, when this ‘caravan’ travels out to visit the “Enfants des Sables” each year, it is not as part of a sustainable development operation. Supported by Essilor and the Optic 2000 group, it is not a replacement for local doctors. Even though this scheme has been operating for 17 years, there is no long-term or medium-term follow up. The children – often affected by serious problems – are screened by teachers working in liaison with the region’s governorates.

This year however, there was something new. A dozen French children, each representing a region of France and selected on the basis of a national drawing competition, were taken out to meet up with their Tunisian counterparts. They came together in the heart of the Tunisian desert, to talk and… to draw.

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