Engineers are also Professional Cleaners

¡Buenas!

I can't believe its been a whole school/working week! It came by so fast. This week has been soo amazing, getting to meet and know the other students better as well as our home stay family, constantly learning and practicing spanish as well as all the new knowledge and skills from the Technical Lab and Lecture. To end it off well and like every other Friday for this month, we had our first Hospital Visit. We went to la hospital de Amistad Japon-Nicaragua, Its the only hospital aside from the clinic in Managua! Japan has funded various development projects in Nicaragua one being the hospital as well as the water sanitation project. It was very exciting and we were all wearing our scrubs, Finally!

On our way out in the Morning

We met in front of school and took Taxis in groups to the hospital! I was the last group and it was  a little nerve racking when we couldn't find a taxi that could fit the remaining four of us.  Its interesting in Nicaragua, the Taxi will pick up people along the way so there may be multiple stops during your trip. Also each passenger pays individually so the price is not a set fee but a fee of 10/15 Cordobas per person.

When we first arrived to the Hospital, there was a big Gate. When we walked in and towards the maintenance offices, in the middle there was what we have been describing "Equipement Graveyards" basically the storage closet/area where all the broken, donated, and "Frankenstiened" equipment are stored. We were all so excited to get working and all immediately started accessing the problems with the wheelchairs and some like me and few others started using wrench to loosens screws to replace a chair. We got ahead of ourselves.



We were called to meet the workers in the maintenance offices, this included the head Maintenacne Director, the Engineers, Carpenters etc. We were divided into four groups each with a Group 6/Fluent student speaker. I was in Eva's group who is fluent is spanish and she is just amazing! Our group worked on cleaning and accessing the problem with the Dryer(Secadora) and Washing Machines(Lavaradora) in the Laundary room. Two groups cleaned fans and another cleaned the AC!

Equipement "Graveyard"

Frankeinsteined wheelchairs

Iyad, Becca y Elliot scraping Gum from the dryer

Dryer!

My group was assigned to an Engineer named Jimmy! who was very nice and could speak some English but only after i clearly didnt understand in spanish. He was really nice and patient and even taught me how to say phillps head and flat head screw-driver in spanish and helped me with my grammar.


Our task was to clan using vacuum and aircompresser the two dryers, both which were not working. One because it was missing a controller the other because of Gas intake problem which we lester figured out may be as a result of other things not the Gas intake itself. We hope to come back in the next few weeks to help them really acesss or give them ideas of what the problem is how they may fix it. Although they have had many technicians from Mangua and jimmy himself have tried to fix or diagnose the problem so its a work in progress.

Eva y you during our break

Becca and I during the break managed to somewhat fix the wheel on one of the wheel-chairs. She was familiar with the company who made the wheelchair and knew how to fix the wheel.

Wheelchairing

The main objective today was really one seeing the hospital and what a days work would be like but more importantly gaining the trust and respect of the workers. It was nice that the maintenance department was there to guide us in what they need us to do and some other groups actually got to fix things like one group fixed the Director of one wards chair.Also unlike what we may have thought, which was we would go to the hospital and fix things sometimes the hospital may only ask you to clean things like we were doing. Its understanding that we are her to be of assistance in any way or form and not coming in with an arrogance that we know everything. I hope the maintenance office gained our trust and now respect us and in the next few weeks we get to see more of the hospital and apply our new knowledge and skills and successfully repair things.

Eva!!! Happy after a days work! 

Street musicians that followed us into the resutranc

Once we all returned to the school we all had lunch together at a Restaurant called "Fresca" its on the Touristy street with all the bars and restaurants and interestingly it was owned by an American couple from california although they may have been Nicaraguan or from some Latin American country. The food was good.

Ropa vieja

Lounging!

Betsy and Shruthhi Lounging at the Resutrant

 We also had a group debrief about day and experience and thoughts and opinions. We mentioned some things we didn't expect such as the same indoor/outdoor mixture parts of the hospital, that there were stray dogs and cats, also their filing system.

The Lake

After lunch a few of us walked to the lake, which i hadn't seen yet so that was cool. It was kind of dirty and we saw a horse, cow and some birds and few stray dogs. It was pretty deserted.

Bridge/Dock leading to the water apparently for the military

Group Picture

After long day we returned home and had dinner which was really good. Since we
didn't have lunch at home our dinner was more heavy than usual. We had white rice, beef and potato croquet it was delicious.  Later on at night, we met up with the group and hung out a bar and walked to the lake again.