I'll be up at 5:30am tomorrow morning to meet with our European partners, a young doctor who used to work in Mathura district, UP and has seen first hand the after-effects of kerosene burns, and Aarthi - an amazing young women who recently joined our team full-time.  We'll be driving into rural UP for many hours into some pretty interesting small towns, district headquarters, and small villages.  Last time we went out - it was like a different world.  These small towns are way more crowded, alive, and full of the completely wonderful chaos of India than anything I've seen in Delhi.  I was also shocked to see so many guns  - something i've hardly thought about in India.  There were young men standing around in trios with holsters, and even when we got to the hotel the receptionist had a shotgun and two of the guys on a couch drinking tea were packing pistols.  I'm told this is quite a political state - and these are fairly 'wild west' areas - but I had never seen it first hand.  At one point we were going past the local police station so we stopped to ask if there were any NGO's in the town who worked in rural areas and might give us some advice.  The police said that there weren't even an NGO's registered in the whole district!  Yikes. 

That said - besides just a show of bravado and potentially irresponsible behavior on our part, we do feel completely safe in the villages and perfectly comfortable as long as we are off the roads before dark.  The reality is that these areas are perhaps the worst governed, and as a result, the hardest hit by basic infrastructural failures.  and of course - electricity is one of them.  most of these families are without electricity for between 18-20hrs/day.  And the thing that really excites me about working here is the same reason that we came to india in the first place: namely- India is what i consider the hardest place in the world to succeed as a product company.  We have to be extremely low priced, while delivering high quality with extended warranties - or else we can't out compete the small scale manufacturers, black market, or established players. 

When I eliminate India's southern most states from the d.light picture - where electricity is better, civic organization is better, and where a lot of other  organizations focus their ramp up - we are  left with the toughest of the toughest areas to operate.  These are  communities that need our products the most, but have the lowest ability to pay.  If we can succeed in these communities - then we can succeed in sierra leone, in Nigeria, in the heart of the congo, in ethiopia, in myanmar, in sudan, in whatever countries might come our way.  I'm not saying its sensible - and it certainly isn't our only strategy - but its  one approach that I like.  Hopefully we'll be back in a few days, in one piece, and ready to give you a download :)