Episode 16 - A day in the Life

I’m sat on my sofa listening to the sounds of the morning traffic and next doors cockerel out of my window. I sip my cup of tea and wonder what the day has in store for me. Now don’t get me wrong, I have a plan. I even have a carefully crafted scrum board above my desk listing all the things that we as a team need to achieve for the next two weeks. But with all of this in mind, there’s only one thing I know for sure about today – it won’t according to the plan. This is life after all, furthermore, this is life in the self-proclaimed land of the unexpected. Truth be told, I don’t mind this, in fact, I rather enjoy it, even if it does have its challenges. We start every morning with “Lotu”. Lotu directly translates as “worship”. It’s a period of half an hour where everyone who works at CRMF gets together and sings songs to God, reads the bible and prays together. It’s a great way to start the day and a real privilege to be able to do this in my work place. After that, those in my workshop gather around my desk (and the scrum board), and we quickly take it in turns to explain what we each of us did the previous day, what problems we encountered, and what we plan to do today.

The scrum board - a work of love

A lot of the work that happens in my workshop at CRMF falls into what we consider “normal” jobs. These include repairing electronics such as radio’s and solar lamps, as well as planning and also performing installations of solar and radio systems. A lot of what I do at CRMF is not what we consider “normal jobs”. My job is to make sure all of the work gets done. This means making sure all of my team know what needs to be done, and most importantly how to do it, and guiding them when they don’t. It also means that I get all the odd ball jobs that no-one else (sometimes including me) wants, or knows how to do. These include rewriting the solar training course and removing several old antennas from the radio mast. Wherever it is possible I do get the others involved with these too, as it is good training, although the later has been harder as all of my team seem to be afraid of heights…

I don't even know what a twin tub is, but sure I can fix it...

Finally there is the greatest enemy to fulfilling the plan. I call these “Bryans”. They are new and usually urgent jobs that no-one saw coming. I call them Bryans because it’s usually Bryan who brings them to my attention. I am the first line of defence against Bryans. Part of my job is to protect the rest of the team from them so that their plan seems relatively undisturbed. This means working out who best to allocate these jobs to given the work they already have, and then taking up the slack, which is almost always peculiar in form. This can range from hospital sterilisers to our housekeeping washing machine. Our work is very varied which keeps it fun and it’s never hard to see the value of doing each job, which keeps it fulfilling. We are very lucky to do what we do, even if we rarely know what that's going to be in advance. With that final passing thought, I finish my banana, down what’s left of my cuppa and close my bible. It’s time to stop wondering, and find out what the day holds.