A little while ago, I wrote about giving out cheap reading glasses to the older Guna women in the San Blas islands of Panama. These are the indigenous people who live a simple life on these tiny islands very much as they have for 500 years (ever since the Spanish, Colombians, and finally the Panamanians drove them off the mainland.)

It is a matriarchal society, and a central part of the culture is that the women sew their beautiful and intricate Molas – which is why they need glasses.

No sooner had I posted this than a reader offered his drawerful of old specs – and now I have found someone to distribute them. If anyone else has a bottom drawer full of glasses they no longer wear, please let me know and I will pass on the address.

Note the guy at the back with the pale skin proudly wearing his glasses. Inbreeding has resulted in a high incidence of albinism, and it was amazing to see this lad suddenly looking at the world as he had never seen it before.

For the record, during a lunar eclipse the albinos are the only ones allowed to leave the hut – to chase away the dragon which is eating the moon…