Mission to Mango, Togo Nov. 3rd to Nov. 13th, 2023

After a very long 30-hour flight to get to Lome, Togo, Africa, we were greeted by the local team at the Lome International Airport. The team van was loaded with a portable microscope and many boxes of supplies that we would use for the surgeries. Then, the 12-hour trip begins on the main freeway going north-south toward the northern border of Togo and Burkina Faso.

Arriving into Mango

The weather was a balmy 99 degrees. The road was bumpy, and we often played chicken head-to-head with trucks and other cars going the other way. The drive is certainly not for the faint at heart. There were lots of checkpoints along the way. We arrived at the Hope Hospital in Mango in the dark, and the team members started to unload the team van while we checked in and got some much-needed rest at the Matousch Hotel in Mango. Chickens and goats were roaming in the hotel courtyard, keeping us company at all times during our stay. We were the only lucky members who got to stay in the hotel as the temperature was too hot for us to get a good night’s sleep in the tent outside. The rest of the team all stayed in tents that they put up in the hospital courtyard.

Accommodations for the surgical team!

We performed 45 eye surgeries on the first day. The surgical support team was outstanding. We did more screening while the team was there as the word started to get out into the community that we were there to do surgeries. Every morning, more people would arrive in the hospital courtyard.

Dr. Kondrot and Ly his wife performing surgery

The next day, we continued at about the same speed, and by the end of the week, we could give sight to 160 people. Looking at the big smiles on the patients on the next day after surgery when they can see again made our long and tedious trip worth all the effort.

Happy patients post-op cataract surgery

We were interviewed on the local Hope Radio statio

Interview on Hope Radio

This trip brought us so much joy watching many people going from light perception (they can not see our fingers in front of their faces but can see the blinking light of a flashlight) to being able to read the last line the next day! It was so rewarding for us!

Successful surgeries!

We left Mango, Togo feeling very sad as we saw a couple of cases of crossed-eyed children, but we did not bring the equipment to perform muscle surgeries. We will come back soon to take care of those cases in 2024.

The people of Mango were so welcoming, sweet, and loving. They are poor and don’t have a lot. The village has a well for water for everybody, and we often see children carrying wood on their heads while walking home after school for the family to cook their meals. 

We can feel their hardship. We can feel the dust in the air, the oppressive heat, the sweat on their skin, the malnutrition, the poverty, and the diseases they have to endure, yet they are also humans like us. They taught us as doctors how to function in a low-resource environment and how to give care with just the minimum amount of supplies. 

We gave sight back to a young girl who was becoming blind in her left eye at eight years old, and now she can see again out of that eye. She was so happy. Her parents are so happy and so grateful for our help. They thank us profusely. We hear countless stories from these patients, telling us how we don’t know them and they don’t know us, but here we are, and we are giving them back their sight and their lives. They can now return to the fields and farm to feed their families. Or they can now be independent and not depend on somebody else to care for them.

They dance joyously during post op days. Singing songs of joys and clapping their hands. They are thanking us for our help but in our heart we are thanking them of the opportunity to serve them. They make our lives so much more meaningful. 

During this season of giving, we greatly appreciate your support with a donation to our non-profit organization.

www.sight.org/Kondrot

Blessings and thanks for your support!

Ed and Ly Kondrot

Need your help identifying children in Togo!

❤️❤️❤️❤️ Sight.org is partnering with Peace Corps in Togo, Africa. They are looking for children with severe eye diseases needing ophthalmic surgeries.

Dr. Kondrot will be in Togo in May 2020 for adult and pediatric eye surgeries.

All surgeries are free of charge. If you know of any children in need of eye surgery and can’t afford the cost of surgery please contact sight.org at [email protected]
🧡❤️💚🧡❤️💚

Watch this crosses eye baby walk straight for the first time!

Watch this crosses eye baby walk straight for the first time! She’s 16 months old. Her eyes were so crossed inward she sees mostly her nose all the time and that makes learning how to walk straight very difficult. She bumps into things.

Dr. Kondrot performs a strabismus surgery on her and now her eyes are beautifully positioned and she can see well. She is starting to walk straight now.

Her mother is so happy. Words just can’t describe her happiness looking at her daughter with so much love.

We love helping the young children as our work takes away the social barriers this child would have faced if she grows up with such sharply crossed eyes.

We deeply thank the generous sponsors who donated enough funds for us to purchase special sutures to perform these strabismus surgeries on young children on our eye surgical mission trips.

Your generous support change this child’s life.

Watch this with a friend. Share our mission work and spread the love for Togo!

Follow Dr. Kondrot Mission Work at www.healingtheeye.com

Support us with a small donation and receive a free gift to keep your eyes healthy by going to

www.eyemissiondonation.com

A moment of joyous celebration for our patients after their eye patches are taken off. They can all see again!

🇹🇬🇹🇬🇹🇬 Togo Africa Eye Surgical Mission Trip 🇹🇬🇹🇬🇹🇬
A moment of joyous celebration for our patients after their eye patches are taken off. They can all see again!
They sing and they dance.
Dr Kondrot takes a break from surgery to join them in a little bit of dancing. But not for long. One minute is all he gets. As the nurse comes out and gently takes him back into the operating room. We have a lot of work to do. No time for the doctor to be dancing around!!!
Watch till the end of the one minute video and see how the nurse gently but firmly gets the doctor back to work!
What a fun time for all the patients!
New sight! New life! New freedom to go to what ever they want. No more dependency on other to guide them. They can see now!
Share in the fun as we celebrate the gift of new sight!
We find such abundant joy and happiness in giving sight to the blind in forgotten and unreached places in the world.

Watch this with a friend. Share our mission work and spread the love for Togo!
 Follow Dr. Kondrot Mission Work at www.healingtheeye.com
 Support us with a small donation and receive a free gift to keep your eyes healthy by going to
www.eyemissiondonation.com

🇹🇬🇹🇬🇹🇬 Togo Africa Eye Surgical Mission Trip 🇹🇬🇹🇬🇹🇬 36 eyes operated on the first day and 59 eyes on the second day! 

🇹🇬🇹🇬🇹🇬 Togo Africa Eye Surgical Mission Trip 🇹🇬🇹🇬🇹🇬
36 eyes operated on the first day and 59 eyes on the second day!
A record number in one on a mission trip for sure.
Here is a picture of Dr. Kondrot and all the happy patient waiting for post op exam.
Our post op exam room is just the dirt floor outside the hospital ground.
We have so little here. We make do with what we have. But all these patients will be singing and dancing later on as they can see again.
Bless their hearts! They are all so happy!
This is how we find abundant joy and happiness in giving sight to the blind in forgotten and unreached places in the world.
It’s so true that’s it’s in giving that we receive!

Watch this with a friend. Share our mission work and spread the love for Togo!
 Follow Dr. Kondrot Mission Work at www.healingtheeye.com
 Support us with a small donation and receive a free gift to keep your eyes healthy by going to
www.eyemissiondonation.com

Togo Africa Eye Surgical Mission –  The story of Epiphany.


🇹🇬🇹🇬🇹🇬 Togo Africa Eye Surgical Mission Trip 🇹🇬🇹🇬🇹🇬
The story of Epiphany. He’s 11 years old. Born blind, deaf and mute. He lives in a silent and dark world. He can not hear and he can not see. He can only feel when someone touches him on his arms.
We operated on both of his eyes. Here he is after we removed his eye patches.
He is seeing for the first time!
He is looking all around him. And up at the sky. Then he cracks a smile!
What is he thinking in his head? We can only guess. His world is now opening up to seeing things around him. He can learn sign language and communicate with his parents. He can make new friends. A whole new life is waiting ahead for Epiphany.
We have 5 more children like him waiting for us to come and restore their eyesight this week.

Watch this with a friend. Share our mission work and spread the love for Togo!
 Support us with a small donation and receive a free gift to keep your eyes healthy by going to
www.eyemissiondonation.com

Miracle from Togo!

🌈🌈🌈 Togo Mission Trip: 👏👏👏
Amazing news: this 8 years old boy was born blind. He also can not speak and can not hear. He lives in total darkness and silence all his life.
He has been waiting all these long years for a doctor to do surgery so he can at least see to bring some light 💥🌈☀️ to his world.
Dr. Kondrot operated on him yesterday to remove bilateral cataracts in both eyes and repair his eyes with other issues.👀
Today, one day post-op, here he is seeing for the first time.👏👏👏
It is amazing to watch him. 👍👍👍
We are so happy for him. He expression is priceless.
We take our eyesight 👁 for granted, until we watch this boy blind since birth and seeing clearly for the first time. It’s so amazing.
Please watch the video. We want to share this with you.
Our work today has touched his life in a profound way. We hope and pray that he has a better quality of life with his new eyesight.
Imagine the transformation in his life now: he can walk by himself, he can be more independent, he can join other kids to play soccer, he can learn sign language, he can learn to read, go to school, a whole new life has opened up for him.
We could not ask for a better result. His eyes are so clear it’s hard to believe he just had 2 operations done just one day ago.
His name is Epiphany, which means a sudden illuminating discovery or realization. For many Christians, Epiphany refers to the manifestation of the Divine Nature of Jesus.
In a few more days as Epiphany begins to get used to his new eyesight, we will have a happy boy running and smiling as he starts to live his new life.
It’s a happy day here in Togo as we celebrate many more blind children and adults regain their eyesight when we do our post-op bandage removal.
With love from Togo Africa. 🧡❤️💛💚❤️🧡💛💚

Togo Mission Trip: accommodation of the medical team

 

🌈🌈🌈 Togo Mission Trip: accommodation of the medical team on the ground at the Tohoun Hospital. The team sleeps in tents. We have one tent for the cook Acoo. 👩🏿‍🍳 She cooks breakfast of omelettes. Lunch: rice and chicken in tomatoes sauce. Dinner: rice and chicken in tomatoes sauce. It’s been the same menu for 7 days now. We are not sure why. It must be the way she feeds us foreigners.
For the local team members she makes other things. I keep telling myself I am going to check out their food but we are so busy I have no time to look. They eat in the cook’s tent. We have one tent with a table to rest from the scorching sun. ☀️☀️☀️It’s very hot here. 100 degrees 🔥🔥🔥the past several days. When I get a picture of what the local team eat I will post them.
The chicken here are so thin. There is hardly any meat. Mostly bones. So for every meals we just get some rice and pour some tomatoes sauce on the rice to eat.
There is absolutely no vegetables or fresh salad to be had.
We work very long days and are so tired at night we just eat some rice with the red tomatoes sauce and catch some sleep.
Life is very simple here in Africa.
It’s so hot during the day, I often have “vision” of an ice cream!!! 🍨
There is a man selling ice cream on a bicycle. He came one day. Dr. Kondrot said everyday at lunch “if the ice cream man comes, I don’t care if the president is on the operating table, call me out I need to eat an ice cream”. He is joking of course. But we all crave a cold ice cream bar in this intense heat of Africa.
We have not had a cold drink for 7 days. There is no ice and no refrigerator.
We all know what we are going to have once we get ourselves back into the United States! For me: a nice big ice cream cone! I will say I have earned it!!!!
We love our work. The people here are so appreciative. They are such loving people. 🧡💛💚❤️
With love from Togo, Africa.