Petek and I walked into the hospital this morning thinking
that it would be a slow day, especially since it was Wednesday. When we entered
the maintenance room, we took our usual seats and waited for Serge and Eric to
come in. When they came in, we said good morning to them and started working.
We first put back together an oxygen concentrator we looked at last week. Unfortunately,
we weren’t able to fix it due to not having spare parts to replace the broken
ones with. After that, we looked at a laptop charger and desodered the broken components
on its circuit board. We found a spare part and tried to desoder that off of
its circuit board however, we found out that the piece was also broken. To get
our minds off of not being able to fix those pieces of equipment, Petek and I
decided to take inventory in the dentistry and radiology department. We met the
friendly workers there and asked if they had any broken equipment that needed
fixing. They said that there weren’t any, but we did see Serge walking towards
the maintenance workshop with the head nurse of the maternity ward. We saw that
she was carrying a handful of sphygmomanometers and a bucket (literally a
bucket) full of thermometers. After taking inventory, Petek and I made our way
back to the workshop. We thought that the equipment the head nurse brought in
would be tough fixes (we were also bummed out about the oxygen concentrator and
laptop charger), so we took our time troubleshooting. We were watching music
videos on YouTube when I found out that there was a simple fix on one of the sphygmomanometers.
I realized that there was a hole in the cuff that could easily be mended. Petek
and I put some super glue on it and the device was as good as new! We were
excited since it was our first fix in a long time. We told Serge and he brought
us to the pediatric department to confirm that the sphygmomanometer was fixed.
Petek and I eagerly stood next to the nurse that was using our fixed piece of
equipment on one of the patients. When she was done, she removed her
stethoscope and smiled at us.
“Il fonctionne” she said in French. Petek and I were both
super excited. Serge congratulated us and the rest of the nurses in the
pediatric department clapped for us. This was the most praise we got from
fixing equipment. Even though it was one of our easier fixes, the nurses were
the happiest. I think it’s because a sphygmomanometer is a device that is used
daily. With our morale boosted, Petek and I were able to fix all the other sphygmomanometers,
which belonged to the maternity ward. The head nurse was very pleased to see
that we fixed all four of them! We also were able to fix a bunch of the thermometers
for the pediatric department by the end of the day.
Testing to make sure the thermometers worked...and they did!
After finishing work, a one of the kids from the local
elementary school walked up to Petek and I as we were walking back to our room.
She gave each of us flowers. Soon after, her friends came up after her and gave
us a handful of flowers! Both of us were very confused, but very happy. This
was definitely a sweet end to hump day! This Wednesday also marks the start of
the final quarter of this trip. I still can’t believe that I’ve been in Rwanda
for a month and a half already. Time has definitely flown by. I feel extremely
accomplished because of all the effort I’ve been putting in to help fix medical
equipment in Byumba. Although I’ve ran into some bumps along the road, I know
that I was able to help out someone along the way. J
Flowers!
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