Mark and Tracey Thiessen have brought their family home from a volunteer mission in Rwanda a few months ahead of schedule after discovering that a parasite was attacking Mark’s left eye.
But despite the threat of being blinded in one eye, both Mark and Tracey are still very happy that they were able to spend 18 months volunteering in Rwanda.
“Even if we knew I would contract this parasite, we would still have made the decision to go,” Mark says.
“There are so many things you can be sick with in Africa,” agrees Tracey. “We were there because we were called to do work there. We wouldn’t change anything. We’d still do it all over again.”
Tracey and Mark will be sharing stories and slides about their adventures in Rwanda this Sunday evening, April 17 at 7 p.m. in the main hall at Cariboo Bethel Church and invite the community to join them.
Almost two years ago Mark and Tracey packed up their four young children and headed to Rwanda for what was to be a two-year volunteer mission with the Wellspring Foundation. Mark, then principal at Williams Lake secondary, took a leave from School District 27 and Tracey left her job as a obstetrical nurse at Cariboo Hospital to volunteer in Rwanda.
In Rwanda, Tracey was planning to work at a new clinic, but the clinic is only now being built, so she ended up teaching at United Nations and community health workshops for pregnant and new mothers.
Mark worked with the Wellspring program training a team of teacher leaders in how to train other teacher leaders, and in a “cascading effect” process helped to improve the country’s education system.
Their children attended an international school which included both Rwandan children and children of volunteers and others from around the world who are working to rebuild Rwanda after its brutal 1994 civil war and genocide.
Although there were some tense moments and random attacks around election time last August, things were going well for the family in Rwanda until last fall when Mark realized something was wrong with his left eye.
A doctor in Rwanda suspected a parasite called acanthamoeba keratitis had somehow entered his eye.
The family had taken all precautions to prevent well-known afflictions such as malaria, but Mark says the chance of this particular parasite lodging in someone’s eye is one in 250,000. The parasite is found in lakes, rivers, and unclean water sources. Although they were careful about where they swam and the water they drank, Mark says he may have been more susceptible to the parasite because he was wearing contacts.
“We have parasites all the time but we can normally fight them off,” Mark says.
Since diagnosis and treatment is very difficult to get in Rwanda, Mark was sent home to a specialist in Vancouver.
In Vancouver the specialist determined that the parasite had burrowed 20 per cent of the way into his cornea.
He was immediately put on a regimen of antiseptic drops and steroids to try and kill the parasite and had to stay in Vancouver for the first month to be checked every couple of days by the specialist.
“It is even difficult to get the right eye drops here in North America,” Mark says.
He will be taking the treatment for six to nine months and even then there is no guarantee the parasite will die. He says the parasite has the ability to go dormant for long periods of time. He is left with blurry vision in his left eye and may eventually need a cornea transplant. Wearing contacts is now out of the question.
For the parasite, he says wearing contacts would be like giving it a greenhouse to live in.
Once the family new Mark couldn’t go back to Rwanda, they realized it was fortunate that Mark’s parents Shirley and Elmer Thiessen already had a trip planned to visit them in Rwanda and were there to help Tracey and the children prepare for returning to Canada early.
They all arrived back in Williams Lake at the beginning of February, four months ahead of when the mission was scheduled to end in June.
Mark’s parents stayed three weeks with Tracey and the kids and were a huge help with the 30-hour trip home via Rwanda, Uganda, Brussels, Frankfurt and finally Vancouver.
“I was really thankful they showed up right in time. It all worked out in the end,” Tracey says.
There will be more on Mark and Tracey’s time in Rwanda later in the Tribune, but to hear their story first-hand people are invited to attend their presentation at the Cariboo Bethel Church this Sunday evening, April 17 starting at 7 p.m.