This last week has been really hectic. Am I actually leaving on Sunday? I don’t want to. We’re working on our secondary project this week. Every EWH group does a secondary project: something that addresses the needs of the hospital, whether or not that is engineering related. In past years, students have repainted wards, built bilirubin lights, installed wheelchair ramps and created children’s libraries. Our first idea was to install privacy curtains in the surgical wards, since right now the men’s ward is also a hallway, and people just walk right by patients having catheters put in, no privacy at all. The head matron disliked that idea, however, as she said they would only aggravate the stuffy, hot air in the rooms. That gave us the idea of installing fans in both the men’s and women’s surgical wards. First step, actually finding the darn things! After a day’s searching, we finally found a guy who said he could meet us on the market corner the next day to show us 3 fans for 50,000Tsh ($32) each. Kinda sketchy, but hey! Good deal.
We did find him the next day, and followed him (pretty far!) to his sister’s shop. The whole way we were thinking, “Oh gosh, now he knows we’ve got money and he’s gonna lead us down some back alley…” It ended up okay though! We got all three fans for the price agreed (an under the table deal, no receipt available). Next step, hanging them from the walls. Unfortunately the walls of pretty much every building in Arusha are made of hard concrete/clay/rock stuff. Jonas did have a masonry drill bit, but it’s never easy to set up shop in a surgical ward filled with patients. One day, we had finally gotten the fan hung and were about to start wiring when a young girl was brought in, fresh from a motorcycle accident. A very gruesome sight, and a good reason to pause work early for the day. We eventually got all three installed and wired in after about 3 days of intermittent work when the wards were slow. Two in the men’s ward, since that was the hot hallway one, and one in the women’s. We wired them directly into the wall power, from behind the sockets so they can’t be unplugged. We also included switches for each fan. The patients seemed to appreciate them, and one of the nurses came in very excitedly when she saw what we were doing—“Oohh, air conditioning! Thank you!”
It was nice to use our resources to leave something permanent for the hospital. We just hope these fans will still be in working order next year when the new group of EWH students return!
We did find him the next day, and followed him (pretty far!) to his sister’s shop. The whole way we were thinking, “Oh gosh, now he knows we’ve got money and he’s gonna lead us down some back alley…” It ended up okay though! We got all three fans for the price agreed (an under the table deal, no receipt available). Next step, hanging them from the walls. Unfortunately the walls of pretty much every building in Arusha are made of hard concrete/clay/rock stuff. Jonas did have a masonry drill bit, but it’s never easy to set up shop in a surgical ward filled with patients. One day, we had finally gotten the fan hung and were about to start wiring when a young girl was brought in, fresh from a motorcycle accident. A very gruesome sight, and a good reason to pause work early for the day. We eventually got all three installed and wired in after about 3 days of intermittent work when the wards were slow. Two in the men’s ward, since that was the hot hallway one, and one in the women’s. We wired them directly into the wall power, from behind the sockets so they can’t be unplugged. We also included switches for each fan. The patients seemed to appreciate them, and one of the nurses came in very excitedly when she saw what we were doing—“Oohh, air conditioning! Thank you!”
It was nice to use our resources to leave something permanent for the hospital. We just hope these fans will still be in working order next year when the new group of EWH students return!