It is very difficult to know where to begin when trying to create a case study out of “A vision for Tanzania”. Working with the Moran Eye Center and having the experience of travel around Tanzania for a few weeks was truly a life changing experience. We were contacted by the Moran Eye Center and asked to document the work of their Global Outreach Division. The conduct teaching based Outreach programs around the world and this particular trip was traveling to Tanzania. They were bringing medical equipment and staff to help work alongside and train local ophthalmologists over the course of three weeks. In that time, they performed hundreds of vision based, life-changing surgeries and procedures. Many of the patients that the Moran team met and worked with had partial or complete blindness. Some of the patients had been that way for decades.
I have been very fortunate to travel to Africa several times now and I have found every experience to be wonderfully unique and formative in their own way. Sub-Saharan Africa just has a certain energy and vibration that is undeniable and extremely rewarding for anyone that is fortunate enough to open themselves up to the experience. As a filmmaker, the rewards are endless in a place like the Dodoma due to all the textures, colors, and the quality of light that seems to be ever present.
This is the kind of storytelling that I live for and the reason why I became a filmmaker. To be able to work alongside these incredible doctors and experience the relief and joy that patients felt when they were able to see for the first time in decades was truly remarkable. The few weeks we spent with the Moran team we’re extremely powerful. When you’re in a project like that you feel extremely bonded to the people that you were working alongside. There was certainly a few challenging moments and things that didn’t exactly go to plan, (like our transport van getting stuck in the mud, multiple times) but these are all the kinds of experiences that bond you with the people that you are working alongside.
The warmth and generosity of the people that I have met working on A Vision For Tanzania will always stick with me. When you have the chance to meet a smiley young boy who will finally be able to go back to school after 2 years of curable blindness, it has an impact. From the volunteers and physicians that I met, to the patients and community members across Tanzania, I am very grateful to have been apart of “A Vision for Tanzania”.