It’s the week before Christmas and I’m crawling around on the floor with Thato trying to stick bits of carboard together. I’m feeling rough and it’s not helping that the flour glue we have made is not working and looks nothing like the man on the You Tube video says it should. I’ve had enough, it will have to do, I spread the glue over the boards with my hands, slap them together and go and lie down before I fall down. This appropriate paper technology (APT) is in theory simple and certainly cost effective but is going to take some working out if we are going to be able to use it.
APT has been successfully introduced in a number of low-income countries as a means of producing bespoke furniture and equipment for children with disabilities. In my previous job working with young people with disabilities in Powys teaching Health Board, I spent a lot of my time ordering specialist equipment for clients, especially chairs and standing frames. Such equipment is vital for children who need postural support to sit and stand up. It costs thousands of pounds but if it can be clinically justified it is normally provided by the health board. What I didn’t do was make it myself, I’d get a rep in to demonstrate the equipment, measure up the client and suggest various options and accessories.
In the past I have managed to bring in some specialist equipment into Lesotho, but ultimately this is not sustainable, especially as children get bigger and grow out of it. Many of the children with cerebral palsy we have been visiting around Maseru cannot sit up without support. This means they are left either lying on the floor, or they are propped up with cushions in slumped positions which don’t support their spines, enable them to socialise, or allow them to be stable enough to use their hands. We need to find a way to make cheap and effective furniture out of flour, water, carboard and paper that will breach this gap, hence the present preoccupation with APT.
The first step is to make boards by sticking corrugated cardboard together with flour glue to make a board about 2 cm thick. Each layer of corrugations is set at across the grain of the previous layer so when its dry two or three days later, you have something strong that you can start to make furniture out of. The client is measured, the various parts needed to make the item of furniture cut out, sewn, stuck together, carboard brackets and rods added and then the whole thing covered with a couple of layers of paper. Head rests, removable tables, foot raises, and various accessories can be added, seat and chair backs tilted and adjusted as needed. Finally, you should end up with a very robust, specialised piece of furniture for the cost of some flour.
The next day we finally manage to solve the glue problem, chuck away the previous days cardboard away, which hasn’t stuck, and start again, this time with much better results. We leave our boards weighed down with various boxes to dry. My throats on fire and I decided to take a covid lateral flow test. I’ve brought a bunch with me after taking them twice a week for the last 18 months as an NHS worker, always with negative results.
I’m not surprised that within a few seconds it shows I’m positive. Over the last 3 weeks I’ve visited 17 families, been to various meetings and events and shared numerous local taxis. People do wear masks and the major shops and businesses are very keen on hand sanitiser, but there is little testing here, few are vaccinated and basically people carry on with life regardless of any covid symptoms. There is little option when you live in poverty and there is no such thing as a furlough scheme.
Considering I’ve had my injections and booster I am surprised how ill I feel, especially as my immune system is normally pretty good. For at least a week I feel wretched with a sore throat, cough, cold, loss of appetite and no energy. I can only conclude that after nearly two years of living a fairly sanitised life in the UK with numerous lock downs, social distancing and PPE, my immune system has gone to sleep. Eventually it remembers what it must do and fights back with the assistance of various plants and potions from the garden and a Lesotho cough mixture.
Left feeling rather ragged from the experience I go away at new year to recover my fitness and get back my mojo. It’s no good starting the year feeling like a limp rag doll. Reinvigorated by the mountains and rivers I return to get to grips with APT so we can work with families with children with cerebral palsy to provide them with the furniture their children so desperately need. We have made a useful contact with the director of disability which will hopefully lead to being provided with workshop space in Maseru to set up an APT workshop, that’s the plan for 2022. With covid now behind me it’s now all about the cardboard, happy new year !
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