American Elections, Tanzanian Style

I would imagine that the results of the US elections, particularly the presidential elections, are on everyone’s minds now. We have been following the run up to the election with great interest here and though there are times I wish I had a television and could watch some of the coverage on that medium, I am quite happy to have missed all those political ads! I have been asked who I was planning to vote for more times than I can count and had a priest offer to have his congregation pray for a victory by my preferred candidate. I’ll leave you all to guess who that was… I voted by absentee ballot this election and it was quite a process to get it back. I received it in the mail (thanks Mom!), filled it out and then faxed it back to the US. Now, those of you who have tried to fax something from Dodoma will appreciate the ordeal that trying to return a ballot that way would be.

First we had to photocopy the ballot because it was too long to fit into the fax machine-I’m not entirely convinced of this, but I wanted to send the fax so I didn’t argue. So, in addition to a letter waiving my right to a secret ballot and a copy of the voter’s oath from the outside of the return envelope, I had 4 pages of ballot. The manager of the stationary store in MacKay House actually took over the task of helping me get everything together once he realized that I was voting for the next president. Of course he had to look at the ballot and ask a few questions, but what can you do? The first time he tried to fax everything it didn’t work. Neither did the second time. Finally, the third time the first 2 pages of my packet went through. Then we had to redial and the final 4 pages went through. Hopefully they all came out together on the other side and are safely in the hands of the election people in King County. The actual ballot is on its way back to the US via EMS so it should arrive well before the results of the election are certified later this month.

This morning, Magi, Sarah and I headed to the New Dodoma Hotel to attend a get-together hosted by the US Embassy. The Embassy set up 7 get-togethers around Tanzania (Dar, Dodoma, Arusha, etc) for American citizens to attend and watch the election coverage/results on CNN. In the 5 minutes it took for Magi and me to pick up Sarah and get down to the hotel, Barack Obama had gone from being the presumed president-elect (Magi and I had both already been online early this morning checking the results) to the actual president-elect and the first words we heard from one of the US Embassy’s Tanzanian staff members were ‘Congratulations on your new president!”

Interestingly enough, Americans were actually in the minority at this event. Other than two or three embassy staff members, there were only about five Americans other than Magi, Sarah and myself in attendance. The vast majority of people who were there were actually members of the Tanzanian parliament. Apparently it’s in session. Who knew? Obviously not me… So, that was quite an experience to watch US election coverage about our first African-American president, the son of a Kenyan citizen, with about 20 or so members of Tanzania’s parliament. We met several MPs and they were all very excited to be at the hotel with us this morning and about the outcome of the election.

The most interesting moment was actually watching Barack Obama’s speech. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but what I found the most interesting was watching and listening to the reaction from the Tanzanian MPs. They clapped more than the Americans in the room did! The line ‘It’s the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled – Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been a collection of Red States and Blue States: we are, and always will be, the United States of America’ drew some of the loudest applause of the morning. It would have been great to be in the US during this election, but I am incredibly grateful that I could be here in Tanzania and see first hand the reactions of people for whom the election of Barack Obama is also an historic event. As someone recently told me, ‘Obama is one of our own, too.’ The name Baraka, a fairly common one amongst our Carpenter’s Kids, means blessing in Swahili. Just something to think about…