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Final Day 14: On the Wings of Victory
by Saint on Sunday May 21, @09:26PM
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| The Journey is at an end.
I write this from my comfortable home in Houston, Texas with my Chihuahua Cindy in my lap and a table full of old mail. Seven hours ago, I was making my way through the usual hundreds strong crowd of patients waiting for surgery triage at Hermano Pedro hospital.
So many sights, so many thoughts have gone by. Wednesday, Day 10 was a low point, nothing was working. Faith in Practice members kept coming up to me saying: 'Are you okay?' so the pressure must have been showing. The next day I went out on a village trip to San Martin Jilotepeque doing general medicine among the indigenous people's. Very fulfilling, so I hit Thursday's computing tasks full steam. I moved Cielo the server over to Surgery to take advantage of the phone line they use for the Internet.
That move proved to be the turning point. I got it connected to the ISP in minutes. Others noticed my browsing the Internet. The former ambivalence of my 'It isn't Windows?' computers dissolved into approval as they saw the familiar Netscape browser working. The team members who no longer had to kick the surgery secretary off her Windows machine everytime they wanted e-mail were for the first time enthusiastic about my hocus-pocus activities.
Things really fell into place. Lucas went up smoothly in the diagnostic clinic. Remote printing was also enabled from Lucas in a short time, as well as getting StarOffice available and configured for the secretaries there.
I only had one day of work left on Saturday, Day 13. Time was running short.
The Franciscan priest in charge of Hermano Pedro, Father Jose, had noticed my activity and wondered what this gentleman who seemed to be wearing a hole through the tile floor between surgery and diagnostics was doing. He is a charming Italian man, a mixture of sadness, gentleness and strength born of 29 years of service during the Civil Wars in Guatemala and El Salvador. Truly a holy man. We went to his office in the archaic building and I mapped out the network I had built and the three computing missions that should be (and were being) accomplished: 1) Expedite patient surgery scheduling and begin building for eventual electronic patient records. 2) Provide office computing support, including inventory. 3) Internet access. He had ideas for the computers which where near identical to my own and he seemed enthusiastic about the posibilities. I told him about Freemed with its browser-based approach. He liked the idea. I came away happy to work for him and his ancient hospital.
Saturday found me in the hospital at sunrise for the sole purpose of getting Freemed working. I had actually failed in getting it up on Cielo in Houston and I was anxious to find what the problem was. I shouldn't have worried. In 30 minutes I found that httpd was pointing at the wrong directory for php3 pages, changed it and bingo, we had Freemed.
Finally! one of the major reasons for me to come to Guatemala was actually working. That afternoon I showed Freemed to the team and Father Jose. They were impressed by the Linux-based mini-Internet running in their hospital. Freemed with its browser-based approach truly showed the full power of what Linux and open-source could do. With StarOffice and web-browsing in place, everything was running on all cylinders.
The new mission team for the week showed up at about the same time, bringing two Wake-On-LAN cards that I had requested for Cielo and the Windows side server. I got them both in and configured in record time, sprinting out the door in order to be with my lovely wife for dinner. I will declare in a loud voice that Linux was superior in the LAN card swap and I'll have a separate article on the technical merits of each OS in the near future.
I came in early Sunday morning to re-test and fix any minor glitches. There where many fond farewells. Father Jose as well as some of the team members staying on expressed consternation about my leaving them alone with this new beast.
As for me, my concerns were far away. I felt light as a feather. This odessey which began 5 months ago pulling dirty restaurant computers out of a warehouse and ending in a medieval hospital of a poverty stricken Central American country was over. In only two weeks the hospital had taken a long step forward in its ability to serve the grindingly poor inhabitants of Guatemala.
My wife and I boarded a refurbished old US school bus to start our journey home. The street vendors were pushing their wares even up to the last moment. To me they were archangels in a spiritual land and in the chugging bus I felt carried away on the wings of victory. |
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