Assan and Alusan

Double Vision: Twins Blind from Birth Receive Their Sight

They lived on the doorstep of total darkness. Blinded by cataracts, two-year-old twins Assan and Allusan had never seen their mother or each other. Their eyes were painful to watch, rolling aimlessly in opposite directions.

The boys were born in an Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp outside Monrovia – Liberia’s capital city where the hospital ship was docked. Their refugee mother, Ellen, originally from Sierra Leone, fled her country’s ugly civil war in 1999, only to find herself embroiled in another – Liberia’s 14-year-old conflict.

A neighbour in the camp told Ellen about a Mercy Ship that offered free medical care and eye operations.
The boys were screened and scheduled for bilateral cataract operations. A few days later surgeon Dr. Glenn Strauss removed their eye patches for the moment of truth.

The boys could see. They could focus and track. They began exploring a new world on new feet – first in unsure wide circles, a half hour later in erratic, confident lines after each other, their first game of tag.