Saturday

Hello. So the week ended on a bit of a downer because I misunderstood the day on which I was supposed to move and thus showed up Friday night on the fifth floor of the new apartment building, huffing and puffing with several heavy bags in hand, only to meet the confused Russians who were scheduled to be there until Saturday morning. Oh. So I went back to the old place that I had decided to loathe, (and in my mind referred to as Mold House), and consoled myself with some really nice Indian food. Man, it's not cliche...the Indian food here is AMAZING. My sag paneer was unlike anything I had had before with plenty of onions, tomatoes, bay leaves, etc. But I'm in the new place now and it's great. I paid the taxi driver £10 to carry my two heavy suitcases up to the fifth floor and it was infinitely worth it. He looked like he was going to be ill after the second trip. I think that the owner of the new apartment - George - is a gay man and the place is well-decorated and airy and lovely. I'll post some pictures as soon as I figure out how to get the internet in the apartment working, (I'm in an internet cafe now), or find a cafe in which I can use my laptop. I learned lots of new things at work last week from the social marketing guys whose job it is to both promote general knowledge of contraception and market/sell contraception. In many developing countries the most important person to educate on contraception is..........the mother-in-law. That's because it's generally the husband who chooses the method and usually he asks his mom. Go figure. I also learned that there are so many fake products on the market, (such as birth control pills that are actually chalk), that there is a price point in each country that tells the consumer that it's too expensive to be fake but it remains affordable to most consumers. That's how confidence is built. Again, go figure. Part of my job will be to help promote longer-term contraception methods such as injectables, implants, and sterilizations (vasectomies and ligations) that we can do in our clinics and thus insure safety. Apparently my team in Nepal is not very marketing focused and so we'll see if I can help. In Nepal sterilization is popular because most couples have had two children (the most popular number there per the census) by the age of 20 and so have many, many years of fertility to contend with. It's pretty unbelievable how comfortable these concepts and terms become after a few weeks. Otherwise, the national elections that were to take place in November have fallen apart but the Maoists have vowed to not pick up arms again. It seems like a lot of positioning and the papers are predicting a spring election. Otherwise my schedule is becoming very exciting with Janice coming next weekend, Sabrina coming the next weekend, and either Ria and Tony coming the following weekend or I'll try to go to Madrid to see Konika. Then off to Dubai! Keep up the emails to let me know how you're doing. xoc