Mike and Carol Gesler are good at fitting in with people far different from themselves. The South Haven couple has done humanitarian work in Romania, Belize and Honduras, and they’ve spent time in Turkey and Morocco. But they have never done anything quite like the adventure they are setting out on in May. For an entire year, the pair will trade their Lake Sylvia home for Gilgit, a city nestled in the mountains of remote northern Pakistan where Urdu is the primary language and life is a lot harder. A retired optometrist, Mike and his wife were invited to volunteer their skills at the Gilgit Eye Hospital, which provides eye care to the one million people living in Gilgit and the surrounding mountain villages who wouldn’t otherwise have access to or the money to pay for such services. "It’s just hard to really imagine what life there is going to be like," Carol admitted. "I’m sure there will be a point when we think, ‘We have a whole year here?’ But at the end of the year we’ll still think, ‘Whoa, that whole year went fast.’" Cosmopolitan enough to have a McDonald’s and a small airport, Gilgit is still rural enough that donkey carts will be as common in the streets as Jeeps and cars, Mike said. The couple will have water and electricity at their subleased house, Carol said, but those utilities will be iffy, not like at home. And while the Taliban, the Islamic extremist group the United States has been fighting in neighboring Afghanistan for years, have little influence in the extreme northern area of the country, military danger is cause for some concern. Taliban strongholds along part of the only highway going north make flying into Gilgit this spring the only safe option for them. "We feel comfortable because this is where we feel the Lord wants us to be, and we’re OK with that," Mike said. Mike retired from the Allina-Aspen Medical Group in St. Paul last May after 33 years. He will be replacing a doctor from Chicago who is taking a year furlough from Gilgit. "We were chosen primarily because our credentials allowed us to go and because the need was there," Mike said. "We’re still healthy, young enough and have the time. We just felt called." His job at the eye hospital will be as a primary care doctor, which means he’ll probably see a lot of patients with red eye, glaucoma and low-grade eye injuries, he said. Because it’s the only eye hospital in an area that is about the size of Iowa, he expects to be kept very busy. Since the hospital opened in 1995, 23,000 patients have been treated in the clinic and more than 3,500 surgeries performed. Cataracts Most of those surgeries were sight restoring cataract extractions. Cataracts are a very treatable condition that accounts for 65 to 70 percent of blindness among the people living in northern Pakistan. Nutrition, environment and genes all play a role in their susceptibility to the condition, Mike said. Carol told the story of a man named Dinar Khan who spent his days sitting in front of his mud house in complete darkness because of cataracts. Too poor and helpless to travel the 108 miles to Gilgit, he spent years dependent on his son and daughter-in-law for survival. That’s how a doctor from the hospital found him. The hospital arranged for his transportation to Gilgit and paid for his operation. The surgery was a success and he was able to provide for his family again. It’s people like Khan the Geslers want to help. "One of the great privileges of being involved in health care is you get to see people helped in a real way," Mike said. "And they are so grateful." "Gratefulness is a lost art in America, but when you’re wondering what is going to be on the table for the next meal, gratefulness is a big thing." The hardest part about the whole experience, the couple said, will not be leaving the creature comforts they know here or any potential dangers, it will be saying goodbye to their five grandchildren for a whole year. "That’s going to tear our hearts out," Carol said. "Everything else is pretty easy to leave."
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