Bloody Effing Hell
Two things happened on Saturday that may mean that my project does not reach completion. First, Dr. Vindu (the really sharp Congolese pediatrician who was going to help drive usage of the OpenMRS system) didn’t show. I was hoping to have a solid five hours with her, getting her up to speed on the intake and order forms and to go over the reports she was generating for donors. Instead, she got called to a meeting with the national office (Programme National de Lutte contre le SIDA) and neglected to tell me. So half the day was spent walking around and trying to find her.
Later that day, the power supply for my laptop died. Granted, it’s seven years old, but I really would have expected something else to go, first.
If I’m lucky, I’ll find a suitable power supply somewhere in town, on Monday. But I had an incredibly tight four days left to get the doctors familiar enough with OpenMRS to start entering in data in parallel with their paper forms. Having two knocked off completely like this probably kills the project. I’d left this way too close to the end of my trip.
I’m not sure what to say, really, or why I’m putting this on my blog. I have to write it down somewhere.
It’s funny how quickly I can sometimes move on from an initial emotion, especially when it comes to work. It wasn’t long after the implications of those two minor catastrophes dawned on me, on Saturday, that I started triaging. I should probably stop working on it immediately, and instead see what other projects can be tied up in my last two days. Meanwhile, the configuration for OpenMRS that I’ve created so far can all be put in a repository somewhere and documented. I’ll be able to contribute a lot if the next team that comes (possibly as soon as February) decides to take this project on. I could come back, in a year or two. And all of my other work here went quite well.
Hm. I’m not quite to the stage of taking comfort in these things, yet.
[Update: Functional power brick obtained, triage in process...]
Related Posts:
- Making Progress! (September, 2007)
- OpenEMR and OpenMRS (September, 2007)
- William Kankwamba, Malawi Maker (July, 2007)
- Live from Goma (August, 2007)
- Neal Lesh: OpenMRS, Information Systems for Medicine in the Developing World (November, 2007)
September 24th, 2007 at 9:21 am
power through, it’ll work out!
September 24th, 2007 at 12:49 pm
wow - so sorry to hear that you’re dealing with all this at the end of so much successful work. here’s hoping that it all comes together and that the system is up and running before you take flight home…
best wishes,
a
September 24th, 2007 at 1:06 pm
thanks, guys. but it looks like there’s no chance for me to finish my project; all the doctors that i need to work with are busy with other things, or out of town. trying to plan, here, is infuriating. you really just have to expect people to flake on you, i guess.
in any case, i’m spending my last few days doing less glamorous work that needs to be done, getting the hospital offices online, setting up my donated laptops for the doctors’ general use rather than as OpenMRS terminals, and getting all the paperwork and accounting for the Goma Student Fund in order.
just got an email from someone who is considering giving OLPCs to the goma student fund, which would be amazing (http://www.xogiving.org/.) timing, timing, timing…
ugh. i’m coming down with a fever, too.
September 24th, 2007 at 8:01 pm
Eric…thinking of you all the time…hope you do not get seriously sick. Let us know when you are coming back. Love.
September 25th, 2007 at 7:20 am
Sounds like you’ll just have to go back to wrap up the OpenMRS work… and I heard you didn’t kill any elephants yet either. Let’s get on that.