Some people bite off more than they can chew. That describes
how I feel; except I didn’t take that gargantuan bite… some less-than-lovely
folks in La Paz threw a curve ball at Centro de Miembros Artificiales and it
landed right in my mouth. I’m catching my breath from time-to-time, but still
unable to chew this wad of work down into a manageable size.
To reiterate; approximately one month before our arrival in
La Paz, the prosthetics clinic I am volunteering at was forced to move
locations and due to other complications also lost all of its equipment. So,
rather than showing up here and observing a fully functioning prosthetics
clinic to critique where/when/how I might add to their practice, I find myself
purchasing fabrication equipment in a foreign country (one in which nothing is
advertised online), planning work flow in the lab, advising on
lowest-cost-possible-McGyver-style fabrication setups, delegating tasks to
part-time volunteers, and giving general operation guidance. I must say I am
lucky to have become one corner of the triangle that is strong enough to get
this much needed prosthetics clinic up and running again. The other two corners
of the triangle are Matt (the American co-founder of the clinic, currently
hogging all the American bandwidth to email and skype with us 24/7) and Ivonne
(permanent volunteer clinic manager) the never-tiring, hardest working,
loveliest, humanitarian Bolivian grandmother who does everything.
Our goal at Centro de Miembros Artificiales is to be
operational as soon as possible (2 more weeks?) so that the two Bolivian
prosthetic technicians can come back to work and we can all continue the
service of providing the best possible functional prosthesis free of charge to
the underprivileged amputees of Bolivia.
What an opportunity! To build a clinic the way you think it should be built. You have the capability and the expertise and are there for such a time as this. God's timing!
ReplyDeleteDuane, as things were cratering around us just before your arrival I was wondering what to tell you and what you were going to think if we were out of business :). Your imminent arrival was just one more reason that Ivonne and Dante and I decided that the center WOULD NOT FOLD!
ReplyDeleteI just prayed you would be a good sport and help us start again from scratch and be our expert adviser - and I am so glad and lucky that that is what you did. THANK YOU!!!!
Matt Pepe