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A rare Genius
Man and machine: Wearing his mechanical helping hand, inventor I Wayan Sumardana sights the microscope he once used to check for diseases on his chicken farm
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span class="inline inline-center">Man and machine: Wearing his mechanical helping hand, inventor I Wayan Sumardana sights the microscope he once used to check for diseases on his chicken farm.
I Wayan Sumardana enjoyed brief fame after reports about his invention of a robotic attachment to help him use his crippled arm went viral. However, since then the device has been damaged and the future looks bleak for his family.
It is difficult not to weep on entering the home of technical prodigy I Wayan Sumardana and his family near Candidasa in Karangasem regency, Bali. Despite receiving Internet fame (some articles getting almost a quarter of a million hits) for his mechanical arm constructed from scrap iron and cast-off electronics, Wayan, better known as Tawan, and his family continue to live in dire poverty.
Their home is cobbled together with offcuts of corrugated iron and cardboard, the mud floor is littered with chicken droppings, broken fan heads reappropriated as chicken coops, nuts and bolts and lines of reinforced iron. The acrid reek of chicken droppings makes breathing difficult.
A scrawny kitten and a black puppy vie for play space with Wayan's three sons, the eldest nine and the youngest just four. The little one has grown from babyhood in this shanty; the family bedding down at night on one thin single mattress with little to keep off the rains or water rising from the floor.
As well as a family house, Wayan's home serves as a storage shed for the piles of plastic trash they have collected to supplement the meagre income the family earns from Wayan's welding business.
Among the chaos sits a microscope, pristine and fully functioning, a left over from the days when Wayan and his wife Nengah Sudiartini ran a chicken farm adjoining what is now their home.
On a bench is the machine Wayan has recently become famous for; which some classify as a robot, but to Wayan is simply a tool to help him use his paralyzed left arm. His machine is the work of genius. Before the rains fell and shorted out its electrics, Wayan's machine allowed him almost full use of his left arm. An eccentric but effective array of pulleys and cogs, gears and levers enabled the machine to imitate almost all the full movement range of an arm.
These days the device can only raise and lower his arm. Built from bits of scrap electronics and metal and looking like a costume accessory from a Mad Max film, Wayan explains that Nengah used to help him by operating the remote control, taken from a broken toy found in a rubbish dump and given new life.
'I left my machine on the bench and thought it would be OK. Then the rain got in. When I tried to use it, it smoked, and I realized it had shorted in the wet,' says Wayan.
With his machine out of action Wayan has reverted to the string tied around his neck and left wrist that he lifts up and down with his teeth, which over time causes dental problems. On his hand he wears the remnants of a suede welder's glove, to protect his hand.
Injuries sustained in a motorbike accident back in 2001 is believed to be the cause of Wayan's paralysis and a reason for the acute privation of his family today.
'Until six months ago my hand worked a bit as a clamp. If it didn't I could give my natural arm a hit with a hammer and that got it moving again,' says the tall, handsome 31 year-old. When his hand finally gave out, he was forced to sell off his chickens and close down his iron-trading business, just a few days after buying a load of stock with funds borrowed from the bank.
His machine is not a robot, but rather only a helpful tool.
'I had the idea for the machine when I was working, holding the string in my mouth as a pulley to raise and lower my left hand. The weight broke some teeth, so I came up with the idea of a mechanical hand.
From the string I thought I could use an electric motor to hold up my arm in different places and for different functions, rather than relying on the string between my teeth,' says Wayan of the thought processes behind his extraordinary design.
His curiosity about how things work and desire to reconfigure the function of objects is not only limited to the mechanical. The microscope, which appears so out of place, was once an integral part of Wayan's chicken rearing business.
'Almost a year ago, when my hand still functioned, we had 800 chickens. I used the microscope to check for viruses. I really enjoyed testing the chickens for diseases under the microscope. I would take samples and check the birds. I did research and separated off the chickens that showed signs of illness,' says the man who would have been feted in Renaissance Italy for his intellect and ability to explore and understand the abstract.
A couple of customers arrive with an old air conditioner to sell as scrap. Wayan crouches down with his eldest son and begins to read the machine. His face is alive with curiosity as his mind strips the machine down to its basic elements, reconfiguring each to a totally different use.
'He's a genius. He's so clever,' says the customer, Wayan Puspa. 'Just look at his hand machine for proof. And he made that with his one good hand. That must have been so difficult.'
This fascination with machines and how they function has been inherited by Wayan's children. But the chance that these kids will ever have the opportunity to harvest the fruits of their innate abilities seems slim. For his wife, who has no choice but to raise her tiny baby and children within the decrepit walls of this shanty, the future looks bleak.
'We've been living in this shed for the past four years. It feels normal, because life has always been like this,' says the 29 year old, seated on a mattress on the earthen floor.
Things look set to grow ever harder for this exceptional family. The contract on the ground under them expires in a year. 'If I had one hope in my life, it would be to have a home, not a contract. We have a year to go and we love this place.'
' Photos by JP/J.B. Djwan
