The early morning sun shines on dozens of individuals waiting in line at the UETA duty free store in Nogales, Ariz. One boy, standing in a red sweater and listening to a portable CD player, shakes his head to the music and stares off into the rising sun.

9-year-old Eduardo Alejandro Lozano Noriega, or “Lalo” as his mother calls him, has been to St. Andrew’s Children's Clinic almost every month for the last seven years.

Traveling from Puerto Peñasco, Mexico to Caborca, Mexico all day Wednesday, they drove all morning to be first in line for the shuttles on Thursday, Oct. 4.

“I’ve been going all day with no sleep,” Noriega said in Spanish.

At the clinic, the two wait only a short time before passing into the chapel where the vision center is located.

Sitting at the pews, Lalo talks about what he learns at school, astronomy and math, while his mother looks on with a big smile and explains her son’s condition.

“He’s very advanced for his age,” she said with a laugh.

“Babies just come when they’re ready,” Lalo said, taking what his mother said as commentary of his birth.

Born two months early in a car at a tollbooth just miles outside Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico, Lalo joked he was curious and wanted to see the world.

He was diagnosed with retinopathy, a condition in which the oxygen therapy he received in an incubator led to the detachment of his retinas and left him blind.

After a short while, Chuck Chapman, a volunteer, calls Lalo up to the table and begins measuring him for a new walking stick.






“Does he want a wheel at the end, or just the rubber part?” he asked Argelia. The wheel is easier for him to walk with, she notes.

She didn’t notice anything was wrong until seven months after Lalo was released from the hospital.

“(The hospital) didn’t tell me anything,” she said. “But I knew deep down.”

Doctor visits in Obregon, Mexicali, Nogales and Tucson all confirmed Lalo's retinopathy and could offer no surgical options.

After learning about St. Andrew’s Children's Clinic from an acquaintance when Lalo was two years-old, Argelia decided to make the trip and get her son some help.

Chapman, a retired teacher for the multi-handicapped and blind, hands Lalo his new walking stick and asks him to practice a bit before sitting the boy down and gives him a notebook to practice his reading.

Argelia holds a slate and stylus used to write in braille and says that her son hardly uses his at home.

“The machine is much easier,” she said pointing at a bulky-looking six-key machine also used to write in braille.


Chapman asks if the boy reads at home because his reading is slow, to which Argelia says she can’t find any fourth-grade level braille books in Mexico.

“He’s smart, very political,” she said. “He learns a lot from listening to the television. He loves the Discovery Channel.”

Lalo turns his head in her direction at the sound of her voice. "I can't see it, but I like the world a lot."