I know that today is an extremely exciting day in America today, and I just thought I'd let you know that across the Atlantic Ocean, we're pretty excited about the election too. Voting for most peace corps volunteers happened a month ago with oversees ballots, even though oversees and absentee ballots are rarely counted. Electricity and running water here is more reliable than the mail system, and that’s not saying much. But that’s here, other problems that face potentially 6 million absentee ballots from coming in are things like unknown additional paperwork, ballots never received by the overseas individual or unrecognizable addresses.
Well anyway, we're still really anxious and excited. The polls will close today around 11pm this evening. When the presidential debates were aired at 2am Cameroonian time, we set our alarm clocks to wake up and watch CNN. This time I might just wait till Wednesday or it will be a long night.
Cameroonians are excited about the election too. Or I should say they have been excited for months now. I get asked all the time “Did you vote???" "What do you think of the candidates?" "GO Obama!". I've got to give it to people here, there are Cameroonians that probably follow this better than some Americans. A couple of my friends here are going to pick up some bush meat (porcupine, cane rat, etc) in celebration of today. And if Obama wins my neighbor will make beef stroganoff. Neither is American cuisine, cane rat definitely Cameroonian and stroganoff is Russian, but oh well it’s the thought that counts.
I just wanted to mention how lucky we are as Americans that we can vote in free and fair elections. We are notified when and were the organized polling stations will be. No one is worried that they will be threatened or chaos will erupted at the polls. Violence and voting is not something that Americans see often together. The elections are monitored here by a system that is credible and respected. And in the end the election results will be published. We also have free speech, right to form political parties, free to participate, free press. Sometimes I think we forget how valuable that is. As for Cameroon, I'm not going to go into the political system here, because it's not an appropriate discussion to be having on openly online.
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3 comments:
"They who give have all things; they who withhold have nothing."
-Hindu Proverb
"You have two hands, one to help yourself, one to help others."
Keep up the great work
Amore
Hey! I'm not sure what happened the other night, but I figured it was a horrific hour for you so I didn't call back. Either way, YAY! :)
Oh, and after much debate among several people here, we have discovered that absentee and overseas ballots are all counted. It is illegal for them not to be. The only reason it seems like they aren't is because in some states they don't have to be counted until after Nov 4, just because there are rarely enough of them to swing the election (unless it's really close). But they do have to count all of them. It just varies by state when they have to do it by. Most say that it needs to be done by Nov 4 anyway though.
Just a friendly FYI cause there are a lot of people at my work who vote absentee and this has been a big discussion hehe.
Hope everything is going well! How are you doing?
Stumbled upon you blog. I was a volunteer in the East Province back in '96 between Bertoua and Batouri. Doesn't look like Bertoua has changed much. Enjoy your tour my Peace Corps tour was excellent and I made some very good friends during that time.
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