Sitting with her big brother on a low wall outside her home, Rehema cheerfully chats to us about her favourite subject (English) and shows us her glasses, which she’ll need to wear for the foreseeable future. Her life has totally changed, although it’s not all plain sailing for her from here. She’s got a lot of catching up to do, because her sight problems meant she was delayed in starting school and she’s three years behind most children her age.

The school she’d like to go to is six kilometres away, and that’s too far for her to walk with her weak leg, but the Sightsavers team is looking at how to get around these challenges and keep Rehema on track with her education. She wants to be a doctor when she grows up, which would help meet Zanzibar’s desperate need for health professionals (it currently has one of the lowest doctor to patient ratios in the world) and mean that another child in her situation might get treatment faster, more easily and at lower cost. Makasi hopes Rehema will keep studying and go to university, rather than marrying young (the custom for girls living in rural areas here).

When we’re finished talking, Rehema skips off to play. Mohammed looks on, no longer worried about his little sister as she mixes with the other children without fear. Where there was once a hesitant, bullied child, there’s now a confident, happy nine-year-old. It’s an amazing thing to see – not a statistic, one of thousands of operations performed in 2014, but a real life, changed beyond recognition.

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