Episode 19 - To Do Or Not To Do, That Is The Question...

A lot the work that we do in the electronics workshop, is the repair of electronic devices. New electronic products are expensive in Papua New Guinea and many items aren’t available at all and so the demand for repair work is high. If we accepted every job that was brought to us, we would have more work than we would be able to do and we would find that our time was being taken away from those we were called to, and that we were being side tracked from the ministry we have been called to. Turning down work is never easy and it can be hard to decide what jobs we should take.

The workshop is usually a hive of electronics fixing activity - I promise!

Our main mission is to support the churches and rural communities in PNG through technology and communications. We try to stay focused on the work God has set for us, and try not to do work which others are already doing. So if a local brought in their TV which they watched at home, we most likely would not try to repair it. It is not for the church or the rural community, we don’t have a great deal of experience in TV repair, nor do we sell them so we are unlikely to stock the required parts so there is a good chance we wouldn’t be able to fix, just making it a waste of our time and the customers money, and lastly, there are others who can provide this service.

Sometimes the only way to work it out is by having a big ol' chinwag

Deciding whether or not to take on work is not always so easy though. This week we had a request to look at a steriliser for the local CBM eye clinic. It was not for a church or a rural community (although it is a Christian mission and people to come from all over the highlands for treatment). It is however the latter two points which proved the most critical. We certainly don’t routinely stock parts for medical equipment and as a workshop we have no particular experience with medical equipment. Except for me that is. I have five years’ experience in a hospital, but that was with a very particular type of machine, which they don’t even have any of in Papua New Guinea. This would probably mean that we wouldn’t be the favourite option. Or at least that would be the case, bringing us nicely to the last point, if there were any other options.

The CBM Operating Room

CBM in Goroka doesn’t really have anyone that they can turn to for technical support. This is exemplified by a problem they had a few weeks ago with their uninterruptable power supply (UPS) which keeps all of their surgical equipment working in the event of a power cut. It was reporting a fault, and the only person they could find to look at it was a friend of a friend of a friend. They basically set it up so that the power to the surgical equipment came straight from the mains power and missed out the UPS completely. This meant that everything worked fine until inevitably there was a power cut during surgery and all of the equipment went down. What’s worse is that they charged K600 (about £150) for the job, which is more than CRMF charges for two full days labour. Now I’m not blaming or accusing the engineer of anything, the UPS is a very complicated piece of equipment and I’m sure that he thought he had fixed it, but still it highlights the difficulty CBM face. After that CRMF were called and we were able to cure the fault.

David fixing the UPS (and me holding the light)

With this in mind, when I was asked to look at the steriliser, knowing that they had already had to cancel surgery and that they couldn’t even use the main hospital steriliser as that was broken too, I said yes without too much thought. But knowing that this was outside of our normal (if we have a normal) and the high stakes of the situation, it was certainly a repair which I felt nervous and tense about. I was able to diagnose the fault and conduct the fix, but there is always an element of doubt with these things no matter how sure you are, and I was definitely on edge as I asked for one of the members of staff to come and test it out for us. We stood around the steriliser like the cast of an Agatha Christie murder mystery as the murderer is about to be revealed. I could barely watch and with every beep my heart skipped a beat think that it might be an error message. It wasn’t. We had fixed it! And it felt good! It might not be our normal, but it is an enormous privilege to be able to support other missions like this one, knowing what a huge impact they have in so many peoples lives.

A naked steriliser!