The week-long workshop of Childhood Blindness has just finished and the partipants from Cambodia, Nepal, Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia and Tanzania have determined ways to work together on research and activities to improve children's eye care in their countries. It's been incredibly inspiring for me to attend and I feel that I have a much better knowledge of the issues around childhood cataract and low vision. Yesterday's lectures were conducted by a pediatric ophthalmologist from Glasgow, Dr. Tim Lavy, who is working and teaching in Dar es Salam on the coast. It turns out that he's friends with two of Ted's (my husband) classmates from Edinburgh. He kept stressing that cataract surgery in adults is very different than in children. His words about cataract surgery in adults were so inspiring that I'll quote them here: "Cataract surgery in adults is just wonderful. It's the best operation in the world. " This afternoon, Mollie and I are going to the local "blind" school, where about 70% of the kids are not actually blind, but have low vision. I know it will be very hard to witness. As I sit and type this, I can hear children crying from the ward across the courtyard. This week they have been doing 30 oculoplastic surgeries, many of them quite complicated and no doubt very painful. The wards are quite full and all week long there's been this background sound of crying. Also, outside the surgical ward, there have been anxious patients, some of them Maasai with their striking clothing and dangling silver earrings, waiting for their loved one. Tomrrow, Mollie and I leave for our two-day safari to Ngorongoro Crater and Lake Manyara.