Pink Eye Epidemic?

On Monday I walked into the center to see several of the Khmer staff wearing sunglasses inside. I soon realized they were wearing sunglasses because they had pink eye. Knowing pink eye is extremely contagious I wondered why they had come to work when most of them are working with children. I just assumed that they were wearing the sunglasses because they were embarrassed by how their eyes looked. I had heard pink eye horror stories from foreigners in Cambodia and quickly decided I was going to wash my hands even more frequently than I already do. For example, the HPC director had told me she had got pink eye so bad she could not open her eye and as a baby her daughter had it so bad she was bleeding out of her eyes. (Yikes!)

Shortly after discovering the staff had pink eye I returned home to find my little neighbor girl with her face pressed up against my window, looking quite pitiful. She also had pink eye and was not feeling well.

I mentioned to my tutor the recent pink eye epidemic and the importance of cleaning things. He then proceeded to tell me that most Cambodian people, himself included, believe pink eye spreads by looking into the eyes of someone else who already has pink eye.

My assumption about the staff wearing sunglasses was wrong. They weren’t wearing sunglasses because they were embarrassed; they were wearing sunglasses because they believed they were preventing others from getting pink eye by looking at them. This belief was displayed again and again with other pink eye encounters I’ve had recently. One of my neighbors recently talked to me by putting her hand over her eyes. In Khmer she told me, “My eyes are sick. Don’t look at me. Don’t look at me.”

So far we are thankful to not have caught pink eye. Even Ryan’s students have had it lately. At times we try to encourage people to wash their hands and things in their house to prevent pink eye. We want to help prevent the spread of it, but we have to be careful how we encourage people in their cleanliness. This whole example of a cultural belief has caused me to wonder: do we have things in our own culture that we really believe are true, but are probably just old wives’ tales?

-Melissa