Well, let me tell you what has happened this week. On Wednesday there was an earthquake - though I didn’t notice anything at all, but was just told about it – I think it must have been when the door of our office swung randomly open. On Thursday we were told that we shouldn’t go to services on Christmas Day, because of a ‘heightened threat to westerners’. And on Friday we were told that two people have died in Manshera from bird flu. I have therefore slightly altered my lax attitude towards eating chicken (which was that it doesn’t matter as you can’t get it from eating it). But tis very difficult not to eat chicken here – at lunch yesterday no less than three of the dishes contained chicken, which just left a choice of rice (which actually had bits of chicken in) and naan. You may have gathered from this statement that my vegetarianism has gone by the wayside – I still am when I cook for myself, but when I eat out every meal consists of chicken and rice.

But do you know what has put all this security advice into perspective – I heard that there had been a landslide at Worcester Park so all the trains from Epsom to Waterloo have been completely disrupted. I would so much prefer to be here in the land of earthquakes, bird flu and ‘heightened threat to westerners’ than stuck on Raynes Park station in the freezing cold waiting for a train that probably won’t turn up. And, security advice aside, it has been quite a good week.

I was able to get to a service on Sunday at a nearby Christian hospital, and I met some expats for the first time in a couple of weeks, which was great! It was quite difficult to get to – MIED very kindly organised a car for me, and I spent most of the journey there trying to establish with the driver whether he knew where the hospital was – I think he thought it very odd that I was going to a hospital on a cold and rainy Sunday night! Although he kept ji ji (yes) he didn’t actually know where it was, but it was quite easy to find. So that was great.

At the beginning of the week I spent two days in a meeting with Plan, MIED’s main donors for one project, which was really interesting. Then followed a couple of days when I was floundering around not really knowing what to do again. On Thursday it was the Aga Khan’s birthday, so there was a cake at the office, which was really lovely.

I had to work on Saturday again – there was a management meeting in the morning. Key learning point of this week: when a meeting is arranged to last two and a half hours, don’t actually believe it will last that long. I had arranged another meeting with a disaster risk reduction consultant an hour and a half after the management meeting was supposed to end. The management meeting actually lasted about five hours, and I was writing minutes and it was so difficult to concentrate that long. I was actually very grateful when people did start speaking in Urdu as it meant I could switch off for a little (though it may mean there are a few gaps in the minutes :) The DRR meeting started half an hour late, and lasted about two and a half hours as well, but it was very interesting. Plan are encouraging us to ‘mainstream’ (typical development word) disaster risk reduction into all aspects of the projects, so this means including DRR in the curriculum and in all training that teachers are given. The aim is to develop a ‘culture of preparedness’ so that in case of a disaster people know what to do. In the Northern Areas there are village committees, and places where stores are kept, and people are trained in first aid and search and rescue. If this had been the case in NWFP and Kashmir before the earthquake a lot of lives would have been saved.

Anyway, there is a power cut and the computer battery is about to go, so I’ll finish here.