President's Message (December 2009)

Doing Things Differently

Our Tinker-Toy Clinic is a big challenge! Wouldn’t it be boring if everyone did things the same way? What is to be gained from Sameness? Conformity? Familiarity? And then again how would we grow without new experiences? Admittedly it would be easier, but we are up to the challenge because SATC has good partners. Working in a Developing Part of the world, we do not always have the things we need immediately at hand, so a great deal of patience, understanding and improvisational skills are required. Of course a few surprises like miracles along the way are always beneficial… and humbling too.

Applying the Tinker Toy principle to building overseas means acquiring most items in the US needed for construction, placing them aboard ship in a large steel ocean going container and reassembling the components at the new work site. This approach requires coordinated teamwork and virtually perfect planning on the part of Tech Serve International, our missional partner in this endeavor. It would be easier if they were located just down the road, but they are in Little Rock, AR, 1,000 miles away. We are in daily phone contact as their staff goes about locating and purchasing all of the components required for this building project. Items are carefully packed, pipes within pipes, cartons stacked end to end; items like custom built desks, cabinets, bookcases and lab benches are knocked down or disassembled to lie flat so that virtually all the container space is utilized. Everything is weighed, itemized in a bill of lading and transported to New Orleans for shipment to the Port of Cortez in Honduras with accompanying documents translated into Spanish. Meanwhile, advance copies of shipping documents are hand-carried by our Honduran foundation to Tegucigalpa, the capital of the country, to exempt our shipments from entry fees and taxes, a process that can take from two weeks to a month or more.

Once the containers are in the country and regulatory stamps of approval have been obtained, they are trucked to our site, three hours over the mountains and into the hill country. Boom cranes are not readily accessible in the area so an unloading crew with a heavy-duty front-end bucket loader and chains slide the container off the flat-bed transport truck.

Supervisory crew leaders from Tech Serve fly in and instruct local laborers from nearby communities how to reassemble the pieces for the various stages of the project. The locals have a few skilled workers in certain trades, but receive direction, sometimes with hand signals or an interpreter when available, from crew leaders. The process has worked well and resulted in income for construction workers, training of locals, introduction to new materials like the use of standardized heavy-duty pvc pipe, flexible water lines, heavy gauge steel walls instead of adobe block, lighting fixtures, specialized clips, fasteners, cordless power tools and underground wiring. Each container is a revelation to the community as it contains more materials than they have seen in their lifetime. So far we shipped five containers, and perhaps one more will follow.

Because of new materials and building techniques, work has progressed more rapidly than what local construction leaders had been accustomed to seeing. Community residents were amazed, commenting on how much progress and transformation a crew of 10 -12 workers can accomplish in a week’s time. The locals have a great deal of admiration for the incoming gringo crew leaders and they will go to great lengths to please them, once they understand what is required. As soon as the steel columns were erected, they started laying native terrazzo floor tiles, even before work was underway with the roofing. Shortly after the first of the new year, the roofing was completed and prefabricated foam-core steel exterior and interior sidewall panels were inserted into special metal ground troughs or tracks and bolted together, providing form for the physical emergence of the clinic. Work on the interior is in full swing with both local and incoming crews of volunteers who sought out this missional opportunity to be of service. We are truly blessed to be the beneficiaries of their gifts of talent and expertise.

Robert L.Sumner, DDS
Serving at the Crossroads