Children who can only see in the dark

By ROBERT KIPLAGAT

Baringo, Kenya: As we walk into the home of Monica Litei, the mother of five smiles as she welcomes us into her house. She radiates warmth that completely disguises her pain.

The 32-year-old mother has raised two children with a rare eye condition that leaves them blind from dusk to dawn.

A closer look at the children, shows squinted and fast-blinking eyes during the day but at dusk, the eyes return to normal.

Ms Litei, who lives with her family at Kapchebogel village at the edge of Kasisit escarpment in Baringo North District, Baringo County says her two children, Dennis, 12, and Winny, 8, had normal eyes at birth.

At five months, however, she noticed strange eye behaviour. She says during the day they would squint their eyes, but at around 7pm the children would open their eyes.

“At night they are active, they play on their own, they lock up the sheep and I can even send them to a neighbour’s home to bring me anything but during the day I lead them to school and back,” narrates Litei.

Out of her five children, these two are the only affected ones. Two others are normal while the fate of her one-year-old, she says, is yet to be known.

The eyesight condition occurred at intervals among the five children with the first and third born being normal while the second and fourth born have the rare condition. She says the condition might not be inherited as none of her family members have it.

In a bid to end her children’s suffering, Litei visited several local health facilities and even sought services of witchdoctors, but these were fruitless. She says she took the children to Kabarnet District Hospital where she was referred to Nakuru Provincial General Hospital eye unit. Here they were assessed and given sunglasses worth Sh900 each to minimise effects of light on their eyes but nothing changed.

Litei also says she has taken the children to various mobile eye clinics in Marigat but was turned away and told that the condition was a ‘family issue’ forcing her to suspect that the children had been bewitched.

Witchdoctor services

With no forthcoming solution, she sought the services of a witchdoctor in Ilchamus area in Marigat. She says the witchdoctor demanded a tin of honey and Sh500 as payment. But two weeks later her children were still in darkness and she realised that she had been conned by the witchdoctor.

Though the older boy is now in Standard Two, while the girl is in nursery school at the nearby Kasisit Primary School, they are yet to learn how read or write as they cannot see. The mother says she decided to take her children to school mainly to mingle with others. “I chose to take them to school so that they can interact with others but despite this, they love school and are always eager to learn,” she explains.

But these two young ones are not the only ones of her children suffering. According to Litei, the performance of her elder daughter who is in Standard Seven at the same school is also affected since other pupils tease her over the condition of her siblings.

When The Standard toured the school, which is about three kilometres from their home, teachers expressed hopelessness in assisting the pupils. Mr Samuel Chelimo, the headteacher, says the two have light-sensitive eyes and are unable to do class work as other children do.

“These children can see well in total darkness where a teacher cannot make it. This is a great challenge to the school since we do not have any special unit to help them,” says Chelimo.

The school, he said, has raised the issue at the Ministry of Education but no assistance has come yet. He however appealed for any help that can be accorded the children through well-wishers, medical experts and the Government, saying that the children’s parents are poor.

Litei, who is a peasant farmer together with her husband George Chelimo, uses most of her time preparing her children before leading them to school every morning and picking them in the afternoon. She is also appealing for any assistance that can enable her children attend school and live normal lives saying that she had spent a lot of money trying to end their misery.

Baringo North Disability Initiative, a local Community Based Organisation that is aware of the children’s rare eye condition, said after their first assessment they classified them as disabled.

The organisation’s co-ordinator, Benard Koech, who is also an occupational therapist, says they found the condition unique, as it was beyond the normal eyesight impairment. “As therapists, we assess the whole body of the persons with disability and after assessing, we found it unique after the mother said that the children can actually see, which we later confirmed,” said Koech.