Today was characteristically Wednesday-ish. I stayed awake much later last night than expected, partly from feeling sick, so when I got out of bed four hours later, I was quite tired for the rest of the day and still sickly.
After the first two hours of Spanish class, I had to give a presentation on the respirator (respirador), discussing the purpose of the machine, how it works, what could go wrong with it, and how to fix it. Luckily, Ric, our technical instructor from the Philippines, had skipped out on the second half of class to prepare his own foreign language lecture (in English), so I didn’t have to answer his questions about the respirator.
After lunch, Ric gave a hodgepodge lecture about fluid pumps, blood pressure measuring devices, and infant incubators. For the first time (in this program), I had a lot of trouble paying attention and staying awake. Fortunately, I had already read those sections which he was lecturing on.
Our lab today was a group activity during which J.J. (the on-the-ground-coordinator) followed directions from us as we tried to repair machines that he had sabotaged. The first machine was an electrical surgery unit that would not turn on. Immediately, someone suggested checking the fuse. Opening the fuse box, J.J. remarked, “Huh—it’s empty.” He then drew a fuse out of his shirt pocket and put it into place. Plugging the machine back in and turning it on, we were able to begin slicing a bar of soap with the bovie pen; a strange result considering that J.J. had also sabotaged the bovie pen’s source of electrical power. I speculate that the electricity found another way to the ground, but in any case, the device should not have been working. Our second project was to help J.J. use a sphygmomanometer after he suddenly became unable to use it or to speak/understand English. Our third machine was a centrifuge that would not turn, and I found the problem (a small fail-safe that prevents the centrifuge from spinning if the lid is not down). Again, he pulled the missing part out of his shirt pocket. The EWH participant from Denmark observed, “it can’t be fixed yet; there’s still a lot left in his pocket!” However, the machine then worked.
After classes, we had several hours of down time before our special guest speaker for the evening came at 6:30pm (as a manufacturing engineer in Costa Rica, he could not arrive any earlier). Since I needed some money to help pay for the party at Gladys’s house tomorrow, I attempted to use the ATM about a block away from the school. The machine did everything except process the transaction and deliver money—going only to a blank screen. I was then relegated to another machine several blocks away. Near the ATM, I was relieved to see a guard with a gun and bulletproof vest ready to thwart any would-be-robbers. Then I thought, “Strange. Having a full-time guard kind of defeats the purpose of having an automated teller machine.” Before leaving the booth, I spread the 10,000 colones bills (approximately $20 each) among several pockets and locations, as I was instructed to do as a precaution against high-loss muggings. (So far, no one in our group has been mugged).
For about two hours, Tomas, our special guest who studied mechanical engineering at the University of Costa Rica, described his experiences in school and as an engineer and also answered our questions about working in the developing world. He used quite a lot of humor in references to engineers being different than “other people”, including the pre-med folks (which include his girlfriend). Someone asked which classes had done the most to prepare him to be an engineer. “Well,” he said, “all of them. And none of them.” By virtue of how tired I am today and how I’m feeling right now in general, I can’t remember all of the witty things he said. However, I think that they are somewhere deep within for me to hopefully be able to use when I face the kinds of situations he was talking about.
Of course, when we started back to our homestays, it was pouring down rain.
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