Francoise, 49, and her almost-three-year-old granddaughter, Moon, both lived with strabismus, a condition that leads to misalignment of the eyes and potentially blindness. For Moon, it began to appear around nine months old, just as she was learning to walk. For Francoise, it had been there all her life.
“I always had a wish to get it corrected,” Francoise says. “When I was growing up, I didn’t even know it could be treated. In Rwanda, people didn’t talk about that.”
Moon’s condition hadn’t yet affected her vision or her social interactions, but Francoise knew from experience that as her granddaughter grew older, the emotional impact could become just as significant as the physical. “She might not even know that she has an issue,” Francoise says, “but I want her to grow up happy, fine, confident.”
At an Orbis partner hospital, doctors recommended an MRI for Moon to rule out any underlying issues—the results came back normal. But that visit did something unexpected: it opened the door for both granddaughter and grandmother to receive treatment through Orbis’s Flying Eye Hospital program.
