An Interesting Approach

When we go to different African countries to hand out eyeglasses, it’s not uncommon to encounter individuals who are illiterate. In these cases, we test their eyesight with numbers instead of words.

Recently we met a few folks who knew neither letters nor numbers. It was an interesting situation that we had never had before! The first time this happened, it took us a little bit to decide we used the logo on the price tag of “Cheetah” brand readers, and asked if they could identify the animal. Translated from Swahili, we heard, “I see the cheetah – he is sitting – he is looking.”

Great! Mission accomplished.

We subsequently got slightly different descriptions of the animal, but “A crouching cat” was good enough. We got a laugh from a lady we told us that the cat was “waiting to be fed”!