ambulance frame #1

trailer frame of ambulance prototype #1

Originally uploaded by BEN Namibia.

This is the basic frame of prototype #1. I built this trailer with a hacksaw, file, stick welder, and vice. A stretcher fits down onto it, and sheet metal wheel guards will protect the patient from the wheels, sand, and mud.

An update, three weeks later.

I wrote the following as an update for American Jewish World Service, who paid for my airfare to Namibia and sent me as a volunteer in their Volunteer Corps” program.

——

Oct 11 through Oct 28

The project is off to an ambitious but good start. I spent a couple of days pulling together a funding proposal, material sourcing, and tool pricing. This first month I’ll be setting up the shop with material and tools, and prototyping one ambulance with which to travel to HIV/AIDS home based care organizations to get feedback, generate more interest, and generate funding support. After that point, I will be working with HBC organizations more closely to improve the design and train additional fabricators for the ambulance production, most likely HIV-positive women from these organizations.

Michael is an effective organizer, and working with him is comfortable and productive. The office is a fairly easy place to work, although it’s interesting to navigate the expectations around who I am and what my job is, among the other mechanics. It’s odd for me to walk into an organization and have more responsibilities entrusted to me right off than the other mechanics, particularly financial responsibility. Independently of the privileges that I bring with my education, english language skills, security of a bank account in the US, etc., I’m finding that I can move within the management and decision-making processes without actually doing anything *here* to earn that place. It makes sense when I intellectualize it (as the imported expert/professional), but on the shop floor where all the other mechanics know much more about the operation of the shop than I, it’s a privilege that I notice, even more than others that I expected to feel more, like race, class, and the securities that I mentioned.

Because this is a city, and the center of the government, banking and businesses of Namibia, is a tourist destination, has been effected by an apartheid history, and has a growing economy stabilized by the South African Rand, there is both a comfortable European feel in parts of the city and there is a fair amount of wealth. On the other side of things, this country is reported to have the largest income disparity in the world. I don’t, however, know how well that translates to “quality of life disparity”, but I do suspect a rough translation.

It’s difficult to be so far separates from the eventual users of the ambulances and other products that I am designing. There are ambulances, public and private hospitals, lots of private cars, and a taxi costs N$ 7, about 1 USD. In this country 20 percent of the population lives on less than $1 US per day, and 50 percent on two dollars US (source: WB, I think), there is a high concentration of jobs in Windhoek, and transportation is fairly accessible. There are suburbs and slums (I don’t really know what that word means, but I’m using it with the connotation of little houses with people crammed in, haze from unknown objects smoldering and smelling, lack of sanitation…) but not many, and there is virtually no sprawl around the city and township. Perhaps the land is too harsh to live on (without surface water or arable land), or the apartheid history left this city layout as a legacy, I don’t know. It does seem crucial to find communities nearby that have similar conditions to the towns in the north in which BENN has identified health and HBC organizations interested in ambulances. In two weeks time we’ll be delivering bikes in the north, and I’ll have an opportunity to bring an ambulance prototype to the organizations that have expressed interest in the ambulances. I’ve been struggling to build an ambulance that resembles a possible final product at least a little bit, in terms of form and function, without the funding yet to buy the tools. We have found a donor who will cover about 70 percent of our project costs for the first four months, but that money won’t be available for use until mid November. So until then I’m building an ambulance with very basic tools (a hand drill, hack saw, vice, stick welder, and files), the same that I might expect a village-scale repair shop to have. It’s a good experience, for sure, but slow. Ultimately, to produce ambulances in this shop, we’ll have a tube bender, a device which will save loads of time and ensure a higher quality product. Hopefully we’ll also have a MIG welder, a band saw, and a drill press.

I’m excited about the information and skill transfer part of my work here, but it doesn’t seem to make sense for BENN to engage in that for a while. The mechanics are busy with their work, and we might ultimately train another employee who is a larger stakeholder in the project, likely an HIV-positive woman who is connected with HBC Networks, and could do capacity building beyond BENN directly. Even if I do train on one of the mechanics to take over the design work that I am doing in the shop, I’m going to make sure that we do repair training with some groups in the north, to service the ambulances that will ultimately be used locally.

I am thinking about (and looking for feedback on) methods for gathering information from users. I would like to deliver prototype ambulances to Village Health Committees, HBC Networks, clinics, or hospitals in rural areas with transportation needs, provide training on their use, and then train someone in usability data collection, for a period of a month or more of use. I am thinking about incentives to collect good information, including the gift of the ambulance in trade for a month + of records and testing, or the delivery of the final ambulance model down the road. I don’t know how this would work, versus paying someone for data collection. Only with the middle model is there real incentive to provide detailed feedback, but I don’t know if I’m being too cynical about usability studies and record keeping. Any thoughts? I have about two weeks to figure out a model for the first ambulance prototype.

On another note, my shop space is… many things. Michael and I went to the auction lot and bought two benches for just under the cost of the steel to build my own. So right off we saves a few hundred Namibian dollars and about three days of my labor. I’ve been slowly collecting hand tools, as well, mostly ones that I need immediately but a few for the future as well. I bought a tube cutter, half-round file, ear and eye protection, sanding disc for the angle grinder, a 500 watt light for the welding table, an extension cord, and a few other tools. Already the light burnt out (I really didn’t do anything wrong–I even mounted it as the directions specified), and a mechanic broke the tube cutter trying to cut through the hardened shackle on a kryptonite U-lock that came on a bike. (I’ll make a note to Bikes for the World, Bikes not Bombs, and Pedals for Progress, and others–any chance you can cut off the U-locks before sending the bikes?) I remember hearing from Keith at Bikes for the World that they like to leave the cable combination locks on, because the mechanics pick the locks and use them. I haven’t seen this yet. I’ll try a Bic pen on the U-lock next week. People lock their bikes with tiny little locks, but as long as there’s some kind of lock, and it’s not left overnight, there doesn’t seem to be much bike theft in Windhoek.

Besides work, life here is interesting, pretty comfortable, and pleasantly strange. Elizabeth and I live in a flat behind someone’s house. It’s about 3 meters by 3 meters (20 feet), and it feels huge. It kind of has more utilities and comforts than I grew up with–electricity that works 24 hours a day, hot running water, an electric stove and refrigerator. The landlady supplied a broken TV too, which is sitting under a cloth, on its cardboard box. Elizabeth has been helping at Catholic Aids Action, a great organization that provides support for people affected by HIV and AIDS. She and I helped take 500 kids to the municipal swimming pool in Katatura, the township of Windhoek, last Saturday, through Catholic Aids Action. The kids were adorable. And it was a bit sad, too, to be with kids who had so little and such a hard life. Among other things, the program helps kids who have been orphaned by AIDS; knowing that gave a slightly different tone to the conversations that I would strike up with whoever happened to crawl into my lap or climb on my back in the pool. I learned not to ask about parents, but to use “family” instead. It’s good to challenge my assumptions, and hard at the same time, to sit behind the fence where we served a tiny lunch of buttered bread and an apple or a hard boiled egg, eating the bread and cheese that we brought, waiting for elizabeth to come back, and wanting to give the food to the kids hanging on the fence and clamoring for food, but holding bread that was not mine to give. I was happy when elizabeth came back and could decide to give her own food away. Having disproportionate wealth, as uncomfortable as it may be, isn’t nearly as challenging as holding onto someone else’s food for them, when there are people who need it so much more. These are little discomforts, and little lessons, but good. I’m not getting the world-shaking experience here in Windhoek that people say Africa has to offer… but I think there’s plenty of time for growth and adaptation in a way that will ultimately be more sustainable for me. A year is kind of a long time, you know? I’m looking forward to it.

So off I go now to an “AIDS Fashion Show”, with comp tickets from someone who used to work for BENN, who’s design BENN sponsored in the past.

———

A quick note after the fashion show: This was Namibia’s first artist’s fashion show, as they said, sponsored by the First Lady. It was in the hallway of a mall, with the runway coming down the stairs. I was expecting things to be operated in a certain way, because the setting was so familiar–not that i’ve ever been to a fashion show before, but it was very glamourous and the were lights and smoke machines and all that. VM6, a local band, sang the national anthem, very choral like, then sang it “VM6 style”. The first lady made a speech about HIV and AIDS, and how if “you’re not infected, you’re effected.” I liked it until she started talking about teaching abstinence as the best way to reduce new infections. Um, yeah. Interestingly for me, the security was non-existent. There was no-one with earpieces standing with their hands crossed behind their backs, a few attending ladies who stood with the First Lady and walked in with her. For N$100 tickets ($20 USD) and no security check you could stand a few feet away from the first lady. I only comment because a few nights prior, elizabeth and I were walking towards town and police were manning every traffic light stopping traffic for the president to come through in his motorcade. We were shooed back off the sidewalk even by a motorcycle police, from an otherwise deserted road. People say he’s paranoid, which is an interesting thing for a country with very little conflict. I don’t know very much of the story, but it does seem like this country is very proud of it’s ability to emulate the first world within the government and capital city, even while there is enormous poverty and suffering among the small population of 2 million.

So at the fashion show, many of the designs were about AIDS, most in ways that I didn’t understand. Hospital gown styles were a recurring theme, as were green and white stripes. The work of Ina Marie, who worked for BENN and gave us the comp tickets because Michael and Clarisse were out of town, was beautiful, and the garments resembled Japanese Geisha dress, while the fabric prints were very african. I wonder if this was a commentary at all on sex work. I hope to ask her if I see her again.

The models were beautiful, the whole scene kind of surreal (again, it’s odd to so easily move between different socioeconomic groups here, even more easily than I can in the US), and the event interesting, yet I was left with the question, if this is about HIV and AIDS, how effective is this event? It is a good lesson for me, to realize that even in a setting that seems way more NYC than Namibia, I need to not make assumptions about the intent, effect, and meaning for the people involved.

And on one last note, I found the Jewish Community in Windhoek, reportedly 50 people strong. The number listed was the private home line of a man who was grumpy that I called twice, thinking I had misdialed the first time. I’ll send them a letter of introduction by post, and see about services and community events.
cheers again, aaron