  Ok, so Elena's been yelling at me since i haven't blogged in so long and in all honesty my project has created many a funny story to share, so here goes... for those of you who don't know, i'm doing an independent project researching water sanitation and health status in ludhiana. i spend the majority of the first two weeks here interviewing doctors and medical personnel regarding the project. some doctors were incredible helpful (one even offered to have me over for dinner with her family!
) and others...well let's just say i've had a few people schedule meetings and then completely forget about them. i've spent many an hour alone in someone's office waiting for some random office aide that barely speaks english to try to track them down for me. the absolute best was then i made an appointment to interview a doctor on a monday morning, and then when i arrived the nurse told me that he had left the day before for a week long vacation!
the next step was to target people within in the municipal corporation (the equivalent of city hall). everyone's advice has been to go straight to the top can contact the city commissioner who is the head of the corporation. well, i started out by getting his contact number figuring that i'd just need to call and try to make an appointment or see if he has open town office hours.
unfortunately this is where the language woes begin...no secretary in the entire municipal corporation speaks english!! i started out by calling the commissioner's office, and right off the bat said that i couldn't speak hindi...my response...they hung up on me...three times! now frustration was beginning to sink in and i just wanted to resort to having someone translate for me.
elena on the other hand decided that a more aggressive route had to be taken. she called the same office and screamed in the phone that she was from the indian express (the local newspaper) and demanded to speak with the commissioner. she also said that she didn't know english adn that she was writing an important article. well the secretary apparently knew enough english to give her another office's number where apparently the secretary speaks english and would be able to put us through to the commissioner. so in my mind i thought we were making progress. call number five was then placed to this supposedly english speaking office.
yup, they spoke english...were they any help? nope. they just told me that to speak with the commissioner i would have to call another number...and they gave me the very number that i had called and been hung up on three times! i even had elena's aunt and uncle call to no avail. eventually later in the week i got an appointment with the joint commissioner, who luckily picks up her own phone and speak english, but a part of me feels like tracking down the commissioner would be defeating my moby dick.
after all that headache, the gang and i were presenting our projects at a local rotary club meeting (now that's an entirely other post all together...oh the horror! ), and i met a member there who works for the MC and said he could set up a meeting with the commissioner any day that i wanted. ah at the end of the day it goes back to the indian way of doing things...it's all about knowing the right contacts. well no matter what i've learned rather valuable lessons...speak local languages!
(hehe, and if not say you're from a newspaper and demand attention :) ) more will be coming on the rotary presentation and the other antics here in ludhiana... 
