Tuesday (July 19)

While walking to work this morning, I was struck by the sight of a young girl, six to eight years of age and in tattered clothing, diligently rummaging through the public garbage bins in search of aluminum cans, which she put into a small plastic bag. A short distance later, I saw her slightly older sister doing the same. Thinking back to when I was that age and what my life was like was an awful feeling in light of their situation. In contrast, however, the adult beggars around here are exceedingly annoying. They have credentials which certify their status as helpless beggars, and when they target us as Americans, they sometimes physically shove or prod us with their laminated beggar’s licenses while demanding money (no ‘please’ or ‘thank-you,’ just an expectation). This, of course, makes us very averse to thought of giving them anything, although, in some twisted sense, they are actually working for it.

At the hospital, a broken scale provided arduous work, functioning only with the power supply we had built and not with a 9V battery as it was supposed to. As a solution, we prepared to adapt the device to be plugged in and planned to buy the needed power supply in the town. As Tom and I left the hospital in the morning in search of a 9V AC/DC adaptor, a large truck full of heavily armed soldiers dressed in camouflage drove in through the gate. “Maybe it’s a good thing that we’re leaving right now,” Tom said. Meanwhile, I worried about why the soldiers may have come. Was this some kind of governmental power-play? After all, there had been a protest at our hospital on our first day of work.

Picking up two power-supply candidates from street vendors selling cell-phone chargers (we had plenty of options), we returned to the hospital to find that the soldiers had gone. I felt rather embarrassed after I asked why the military had come in the first place. “One of the soldiers was sick,” I was told.

The power supplies didn’t work, so we’ll have to try another approach with the broken scale tomorrow. Meanwhile, a couple of nebulizers from the pediatric ward had a problem, tending to overheat and melt the connective tubing. We dismantled them, cleaned and oiled the motors, put them back together, and then tested them by letting them run for 25 minutes. For now, they are functioning well, but if problems resurge, we may have to have the motors professionally cleaned and serviced in the town.

After work, we went to the supermarket where Felix works to find a power supply with the exact specifications we needed. At the front of the store, the armed security man, who also kept customers’ bags and purses in lockers, began shouting forcefully at someone, chasing him outside and threatening further action. Every legitimate business has an armed guard, and the illegitimate businesses probably have more.