Act 16 | Saint Vincent & the Grenadines

I was in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) in order to visit Kelron Harry, my fellow striker from the Dunedin soccer team we played in last year, and to run a free optometry clinic out of the church that he leads. (It was exciting being together again.)

Kel's family were willing to have me under their roof while I was in town, which gave me another golden opportunity to soak up some good family vibes.


Joshua, who has a thousand dollar smile and way too much energy for any one day, is the Harry's first born son and only child.

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There is quite a lot involved in running an eye clinic and the members of the church, who hadn’t done anything like this before, did a wonderful job in setting up the church hall and letting members of the poor community in which their church is located know about the clinic.


Ro-Anne (seated in the above picture), Kel’s wife, did an enormous amount of work before I arrived sorting out legalities with the Ministry of Health and organising support from local charitable organisations so that we were able to offer spectacles at no cost to the patients I saw: She is one very capable and compassionate individual (who is currently working on a PhD investigating issues related to child poverty in the Caribbean with the University of Otago).


I trained a number of church members to measure vision and take basic patient details; These people were also charged with keeping the peace and the numbering system in place in the rather warm waiting room.


Another key player in the project was Dr Onu (a local ophthalmologist), meeting him for the first time was a lot like meeting Morpheus from The Matrix Trilogy; except that instead of offering me a red or blue pill, he offered to supply me with the equipment I needed to examine patients and to see the patients (at no cost) that needed the extra attention of an eye doctor (also at no charge); We simply couldn't have achieved what we did without his generous input.


Over the course of four days on consultations I managed to see a little over 150 patients.


The local paper considered what we were doing as newsworthy.



A long hot night was spent at the end of the working week searching through box after box of old spectacles, looking for what we were looking for; We managed to match 70 prescriptions to donated spectacles (which was a mighty fine effort given the poor quality of most of the frames & lenses, and the poor labelling system used for the boxes).


Funds were raised to buy a selection of new glasses for the unmatchable prescriptions; All together, 120 pairs of glasses were issued free of charge to those who had need of them, which I call 'worthwhile work' and 'a big success'.

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St Vincent was not all work and no play …


Dominoes is a adults game in the Caribbean, played mostly by men when limin' with one another. (I was so tired this night that I didn’t realise I was playing with a partner until several rounds had been played, or that the guys were actually speaking a language that I couldn't have understood even if I was less tired.)


There was time on the weekend for Kel and I to combine forces on the soccer field again and win the soccer competition at the family fun day run by the local power company.


And there was time outside of office hours to float around the warm waters of the Caribbean Sea.

Kingstown is the capital of St Vincent, boasting some 30000 people; It has a very small town feel as everybody seems to know each other (and their sordid histories).


I did managed to escape Kingstown & chalk up some time in the Grenadines by spending an afternoon on the nearby island of Bequia.


The ride there and back was a rockin' affair.


Swimming with kids is so much more fun than swimming without kids.

There was even time in St Vincent to hang out with one of the local celebrities, Chris is the morning radio host of the popular talk back program “what does get me vexed”.

'Vexed', and all its derivatives, are some of my favourite words, it was good to be in a place where they are well used; Other words/phrases that I like which are given more air time in the Caribbean include 'mashed up' & 'foolish/ness'. (I also grew to love the word 'lime', which means 'to hang out'.)

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Carib's are also big on titles, during my week in St Vincent I was variously referred to as:

Uncle luke;

Doctor luke;

and Brother luke;

None of which are strictly true,

but all of which are very nice.

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Saying goodbye to the Harry family - who I had very quickly grown very fond of - was made very much easier by the plans we had made to reconnect in Barbados in a few weeks time.