Our First Fix!!

Today we went to Mount Meru Hospital for our second group work-day. It was much more organized this time since we knew what to expect and the closet where the hospital keeps all of their broken equipment had been organized. Last week, Alex and I had been shown an OB-GYN operating room that had two heaters, one of which was completely broken and the other which had only one out of two heating elements working. Today we found a spare heater in the equipment closet and after twisting together some wires and sticking them into the power outlet, found out that it was working. We then went to replace the broken heater, but found a newborn baby outside the operating room and thus decided to go back later. We then took a "quick" trip into town to find a hardware store for some needed parts and to eat lunch. We arrived back at the hospital 3 and a half hours later. Luckily, there was not an operation going on this time.

We brought our tool kit into the operating room and opened up the unit, which was a bit trickier than it should have been since it was mounted on the wall above our heads. Once we had it all opened up, we were able to quickly find the problem. Two of the wire connections had come loose so that the heating elements were not receiving any power. So instead of replacing the whole unit, all we had to do was solder the wires back together, which was a little bit of a challenge since we needed to connect to an incredibly rusted screw. It was not a very difficult repair to make, but it felt great to fix a piece of needed equipment in an already under-equipped operating room. I did sneak some pictures of the room, so hopefully I will have those up soon. Next Friday we are going to replace the other heater in the room with the spare that we had found in the closet today. Alex and I then celebrated our first success with a big bottle of cold water. Yummm!

The whole group is going to Zanzibar this weekend! We have off from classes on Monday, so we will get three days there. I am sure that I will have lots of stories once I get back. We have lots of fun stuff planned and we are all really looking forward to it. We have been so busy that we are all ready for a well-deserved break.