Make a call to the SES API.

        :type action: string
        :param action: The API method to use (e.g. SendRawEmail)

        :type params: dict
        :param params: Parameters that will be sent as POST data with the API
            call.

def _make_request(self, action, params=None):
        """Make a call to the SES API.

        :type action: string
        :param action: The API method to use (e.g. SendRawEmail)

        :type params: dict
        :param params: Parameters that will be sent as POST data with the API
            call.
        """
        ct = 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded; charset=UTF-8'
        headers = {'Content-Type': ct}
        params = params or {}
        params['Action'] = action

        for k, v in params.items():
            if isinstance(v, unicode):  # UTF-8 encode only if it's Unicode
                params[k] = v.encode('utf-8')

        response = super(SESConnection, self).make_request(
            'POST',
            '/',
            headers=headers,
            data=urllib.urlencode(params)
        )
        body = response.read()
        if response.status == 200:
            list_markers = ('VerifiedEmailAddresses', 'SendDataPoints')
            e = boto.jsonresponse.Element(list_marker=list_markers)
            h = boto.jsonresponse.XmlHandler(e, None)
            h.parse(body)
            return e
        else:
            # HTTP codes other than 200 are considered errors. Go through
            # some error handling to determine which exception gets raised,
            self._handle_error(response, body)