TIL: why HIV is complex

Yesterday started at 2AM for me. It was either a howling dog, a tooting car or an overachieving rooster that woke me up. I forget which though all of them tried at some stage of the night. I tried in vain for a good hour to force myself back to sleep.

I learnt about HIV today. Specifically, the different categories of antiretroviral drugs and how each intervenes at different stages of the HIV replication cycle using different strategies. Fascinating!

I met one of the implementing partners (Baylor), went along to the National Drug Authority office to get a consignment cleared and finished back at the office to study the different first line and second line drug regimens. I hope to be able to rattle off HIV drug names and side effects by the end of the month.

The team works proper private sector hours. 8PM finishes are quite common and seem easy when surrounded by so much drive and passion. This has the pace and focus of consulting directed towards a goal I can feel proud of. The people are brilliant! Two of them went to Harvard [ed: one of them works at another NGO], one worked at Bain [ed: Oh! and two of them are engineers :) ]. Not sure about the rest but I'm sure they are equally well accomplished.

Also I had a banana.

It was the first thing I did yesterday.

I bought a bunch.

Jealous?