Hospitalini- at the hosptial
“This piece of machinery is completely broken,” the nurse said to my partners and I as she pointed at a neonatal recessitation table which was to be used for emergency procedures on new born babies. Looking around the room, I realized this was the only piece of machinery of it’s kind. I took a breathe and tried to understand the rest of my surroundings– chipped paint and a single light bulb dangling from the ceiling, baby carriages in the corner draped in bright blue mosquito nets, and a miniature scale placed in the corner made up this emergency surgery room. “we will do our best!” I replied cheerfully to the nurse as she finished explaining why the machinery was not functioning correctly, but inside I felt a little bit nervous.
This nervousness grew as we opened the machinery and began to look at its inner workings. My introductory circuit class had not really prepared me for the string of circuitry and wires which protruded from every direction of inside of the equipment. I turned to my partners, who looked equally confused, and we began to throw out vague ideas for potential problems and solutions.
As we talked, I started to again look at the outside of the machine. “may I try something crazy?” I asked. As the other girls curiously nodded, I again tried to turn on the machine. With no success, I tried holding down the power button for 5 seconds. Everything lit up, and I gasped with excitement. The nurse had said the equipment sometimes turned on, and sometimes didn’t. She also mentioned that when it did turn on, the buttons did not respond to her touch. I examined the screen again, and noticed a small button labeled “keypad lock”, after holding this down for five seconds and then changing the mode…it was miraculous! This machine was in perfectly working condition.
Excitedly, we called the nurse in to show her our progress. She beamed and had us repeat the set up process multiple times until she could repeat it back to us perfectly. This machine had been donated to the hospital some time ago, and had come without an instruction manual or translation for the words on the screen such as “keypad lock”.
As the nurse recorded our instructions and taped them (in Swahili) to the machine, I was struck by the immense simplicity of this problem. For me, an American student constantly surrounded by technology, it seemed so inherent to try holding down the power button, and to take the time yo switch the mode. However, when donated equipment comes to this rural area without instructions or translations, the equipment (though in perfect condition) is seen as “completely broken” and is useless to the hospital and its patients.
I feel incredibly blessed and humbled to have been able to witness this problem first hand… And to be able to brainstorm solutions to this and the many other problems students saw with my classmates. Our classes are going quite well, and I am learning to make full sentences in Swahili as well as engineer devices which could be useful to our hospitals (today we made flashlights!) We will continue our classes for the next four weeks while taking breaks on Fridays to practice our skills in local hospitals. Wish me luck this week– we have two exams!
In other news, this weekend I traveled to a Masai village to learn about the history of Tanzania, watched a traditional healer attempt to remove the pain in my friend’s knee with some mud and leaves, made my own coffee out of beans picked from a coffee bush on a Tanzanian farm, and practiced my Swahili bartering at a local market!
But by far the most important news of all… As I write this post it is my brother Thomas’s 13th birthday!!!!!!! He is truly the best little brother in the whole world, and I am so incredibly lucky God placed him on earth 13 years ago today and made him my brother 🙂 he is actually the coolest kid around, so this ones for you bud– to a whole year of laughter, new high scores, tons of fun, and pop tarts!
trekkingtanzania 