There is a particular weight that comes with a title you are not sure you are ready for. Mujidat knew that weight well. At sixteen, she was the general health prefect of her secondary school in Sapele, Delta State — responsible, on paper, for the wellbeing of hundreds of students going about their noisy, energetic school days.
In practice, she managed minor cuts, headaches, and the occasional student who needed to lie down. It was enough, she thought. It was what the role required.
Then MatataBrown came to her school, and she realised how much she had not known to look for.
A Title Without a Toolkit
Before MatataBrown’s eye health sensitisation and education sessions, Mujidat’s response to any eye-related incident was instinctive rather than informed. A student whose eye was hit during sports got sympathy and a cold cloth. A child with something in their eye had it rubbed out — or at least, someone tried. These were the responses available to her. Nobody had ever told her that some of them could make things significantly worse.
She was doing her best. But her best, as she would come to understand, was operating without some critical information.
What the Sessions Built
MatataBrown’s sessions gave Mujidat and her team something concrete and specific — a set of skills they could carry into any school day and apply with confidence the moment they were needed.
The first and perhaps most important lesson was about instinct. When a student injures their eye, the natural impulse — for the child and for anyone nearby — is to rub it. Mujidat learned why that impulse must be resisted. Rubbing an injured eye can drive a foreign body deeper into the tissue, worsen a corneal scratch, or introduce infection. The first response is stillness, not action.
From there, she learned how to irrigate an affected eye properly — using clean running water, tilting the student’s head so the water flows away from the unaffected eye, protecting it from secondary irritation or cross-contamination. A detail as precise as the direction of a tilt, she discovered, carries real clinical consequence.
She was taught how to examine the eye for foreign bodies — how to identify what can be gently removed and, crucially, what must not be touched at all. A superficial particle sitting on the white of the eye is different from something embedded in the cornea. Knowing the difference between a case for gentle first aid and a case for immediate referral is, in itself, a form of protection.
For swollen eyes — particularly after a blunt impact — she learned the role of a cold compress in reducing inflammation, and more importantly, she learned the signs that should cut any monitoring short and send a student to the clinic without delay: persistent pain, changes in vision, visible damage to the eyeball, or a wound that would not stop weeping.
The sessions also covered the quieter disciplines — the ones that prevent incidents before they happen. Regular handwashing. The firm rule that nothing enters a student’s eye unless it has been prescribed by a doctor. No home remedies. No well-meaning drops. No borrowed treatments. These boundaries, Mujidat learned, are not overcaution. They are the difference between a manageable situation and a preventable loss of sight.
Finally, she was encouraged to carry this knowledge beyond the school gate — to share it at home, with younger siblings, with parents, with anyone in her circle who might one day need it. The session did not end when she left the room. It was designed to travel with her.
When It Was Put to the Test
It did not take long for the training to matter.
During a school sports session, a student took a direct blow near his eye. Before MatataBrown’s training, this might have been treated as a minor knock — a cold cloth, a few minutes of rest, back to class. Mujidat responded differently. She kept the student calm, ensured no one rubbed or pressed the eye, applied a cold compress correctly, and monitored him closely for the warning signs she had been taught to recognise. When his vision seemed off and the swelling was not settling, she escalated immediately. He was referred to the clinic the same afternoon.
These were not dramatic rescues. They were quiet, competent acts of attention — exactly the kind of response MatataBrown’s training is designed to produce.
What Competence Feels Like
When Mujidat speaks about her role now, something has shifted in how she holds it. The title is no longer bigger than she is. She has grown into it — not because she has all the answers, but because she knows what to do when it counts.
She describes her team differently too. Before, they were students wearing badges. Now, they move through the school with a specific kind of alertness — the kind that comes from knowing what to look for and trusting that what they find will be handled correctly.
“We know what to do,” she says simply. “Before, we were just there. Now we are actually useful.”
That shift — from presence to purpose — is what MatataBrown’s community education work is built to create. Not just screenings. Not just referrals. But young people in schools across Nigeria who are equipped, alert, and ready to act before the damage becomes irreversible.
Mujidat is sixteen. She has already made a difference.