Marco Antonio Nina, 26, who misplaced his left arm on the age of 14 in a piece accident, checks his bionic arm prosthesis that Roly Mamani made for him in his ‘Robotics Creators’ workshop in Achocalla, Bolivia, on January 8, 2024
JORGE BERNAL
Textual content measurement
As a child rising up in poverty in rural Bolivia, Roly Mamani constructed his personal toys. Now a 34-year-old engineer, he 3D prints limbs for Indigenous compatriots scarred by life-changing accidents.
Mamani funds the endeavor with the cash he makes from promoting robotic toys he makes — his different ardour, which, after constructing his first remote-controlled toy automobile as a toddler, he by no means deserted.
Surrounded by prostheses, crops and 3D-printed dinosaurs in his research, Mamani pores over an arm he’s devising for a boy who misplaced his attributable to an electrical surge.
It’s his function, the engineer advised AFP, “to enhance folks’s high quality of life.”
The son of small-scale farmers, Mamani grew up in Achocalla, a group nestled between two lagoons some 15 kilometers (10 miles) north of the capital La Paz, verdant with pasture, greens and tubers.
With no cash for toys, he began constructing his personal play automobiles from plastic and cardboard at a younger age, upgrading in major faculty to a motorized model.
Earlier than getting into public college, Mamani labored for 2 years at an car workshop the place he was uncovered to “the primary actual machines I ever noticed.”
Ten years in the past, he opened his personal workshop in Achocalla to construct robotic toys and academic aids.
“You may say I’ve all of the toys I need now,” he mentioned.
Then every little thing modified when he heard a few rural man with out palms and thought to himself: “I could make them for him.”
In 2018, the toymaker of Achocalla got down to discover life-improving options for different disfigured Bolivians along with his 3D printers.
“Science is sort of a superpower. Robotics is a development, but when it doesn’t handle vital issues, it does not imply something,” he mused.
Bolivian engineer and robotics skilled Roly Mamani obtained his begin in robotics by making a toy automobile as a toddler
Jorge Bernal
In opposition to the background noise of printers at work, Mamani advised AFP he can create six models a month.
Since 2018, “we now have made greater than 400 prostheses,” he mentioned.
Half have been delivered freed from cost or at the price of manufacturing, funded by his robotics gross sales.
On common, a 3D-printed prosthesis in Bolivia prices about $1,500, greater than 5 instances the minimal wage.
A practical prosthesis — the sort that enables sure actions — can value as a lot as $30,000.
But the general public well being system doesn’t cowl prosthetics, in a rustic the place some 36,100 folks have bodily and mobility issues, in keeping with the state-aligned Nationwide Committee of Folks with Disabilities.
Mamani himself chooses the recipients of his donations from the numerous requests he receives, together with from overseas.
“The folks in probably the most want are those that work precarious jobs with out security, which is why they’ve these accidents during which they lose a limb,” he mentioned.
Pablo Matha, 59, who misplaced a part of his proper arm and his sight attributable to mishandling dynamite in a mining accident, can now play guitar
Jorge Bernal
One in every of their beneficiaries is 59-year-old Pablo Matha, who misplaced his imaginative and prescient and proper hand seven years in the past in a mining accident involving dynamite.
After that, “I went out daily to ask for some cash (on the road.) That is the place my good friend Roly and his brother discovered me,” Matha advised AFP.
Mamani’s brother Juan Carlos is a physiotherapist, who helps with the sufferers’ bodily rehabilitation.
Matha mentioned the prosthesis helped him regain his self-respect. He now performs the guitar to earn a dwelling.
He mentioned he used to “really feel folks me and laughing. However now that I’ve the prosthesis… generally I really feel that I’m like every extraordinary particular person.”
Marco Antonio Nina, 26, was one other recipient. As a teen, engaged on a masonry venture, an electrical shock severed his left arm and stunted the correct one.
“I wish to sing, however with out the prosthesis it harm to carry the microphone… Now with this, it is a blessing,” he mentioned.
Mamani desires to make use of the popularity he has received for his work — he has been awarded a US robotics scholarship — to arrange a rehabilitation heart.
“I need to generate my very own expertise, I’ve to enhance,” he mentioned.