Mwajuma: catching sight of a better life

For young adults like Mwajuma, your support for CBM helps break the link between disability and poverty.

When Mwajuma went blind, her friends laughed.

"They would call me names," she painfully remembers. "They would call after me, 'Blind girl, blind girl, there goes the blind girl!'. It made me cry many times." 

As cruel as it was, this wasn't worst of the worries that Mwajuma and her family faced when she lost her sight to bilateral cataracts over three years ago.

Her father Hosseni says, "I am a farmer, but I haven't been able to do the work I want to. When she could see, Mwajuma would go to school and play with her friends. But now our time is spent looking after her."

Just the beginning

Loss of sight for Mwajuma was the start of the cycle from which her whole family couldn't escape.

"When I had to go to work, she would stay at home with her mother," her father recalls. "And when she had to go to work, I would come home. We were losing money. I ask myself, what can I do for Mwajuma? I can't even pay to take her to a doctor. So how could I afford a big hospital?" 

Mwajuma dropped out of school and sank into depression.

"I haven't been to school for three years. I miss my friends and what I used to do. When I can't see I just stay at home with my brothers and sisters. I am very, very sad and feel unhappy that this is my life."

The gift of sight restored Mwajuma's (left) whole family's hopes for the future. Photo: CBM.

Gone were the days when she could fetch water for her mum or help her father with the goats. "And it was too dangerous to have her near the cooking fire," her mother says.

Mwajuma's surgery

Representatives from CBM partner organization KCMC (Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre) travel throughout Tanzania looking for people who are needlessly blind. The fact that it took them three years to find Mwajuma and offer sight-restoring surgery dramatically demonstrates how important your support for CBM really is.

Around the world, as many as 18 million people like Mwajuma and her family are still in need. As for Mwajuma, a whole new life has opened up before her.

"I am so happy! I am on a bus going home and I can see! And no more teasing. I will be able to see the ones who used to tease me!" - Mwajuma after surgery