I once traveled to Africa with a documentary film crew. One of our battery packs broke and a local was able to whip out a soldering iron and take the whole thing apart. He quickly identified the fuse as the offending part. Rather than asking if we happened to have a spare, he simply heated the fuse, teased the metal end caps off it and used a bit of similar-gauged wire to rebuild the fuse itself. This all happened in under ten minutes in a dark hallway while he was sitting on the floor.

Sure, lots of people in lots of places are handy with various things but here in the states we rarely HAVE to fix things with no possibility of acquiring replacement parts, so I think sometimes it doesn't even occur to us to try.