I have 5% charge left on my laptop and no way to charge it until we get to the office/hospital tomorrow so this will be a quick post!
Today was our first work day at Kisarawe. We began the morning pretty early at 8AM, but "Swahili/Island time" still stands in Kisarawe, so we weren't able to get into the wards until noon, and began work after a quick lunch break. Almost every ward has at least one or two broken machines... including autoclaves, sonograms, blood pressure monitors, portable suction pumps, weigh scales, mortuary refrigerators... the list goes on and on. We started off strong, "fixing" the sonogram in the maternity ward by putting in a new 9V battery. But things went downhill from there. The autoclave had a busted heating coil (working on fixing it with the local metal worker), the portable suction cup had several blown capacitors and fuses (none of which we are likely to be able to find here), and well, the blood pressure monitor we just couldn't get to work. The motor would work but there was something wrong with the circuitry we couldn't troubleshoot.
To end off the day, we had banana soup, which is about as appetizing as it sounds... see picture below!
Tomorrow is another day!
Cheers from TZ,
Irene
