english blog 2

Blog 2 English

04.30, October 30th, the alarm wakes me and I wonder why I was so eager to join the EU observers to visit the polling stations. Peter, the owner of the Gossner Mission, has asked my colleague Lieve and myself to join him – and of course you don’t say no to that.

At 05.30 we arrived at the first polling station. Three lines of people were already awaiting the opening. It was a beautiful sight; teachers, farmers, rich people, poor people and women in their beautifully colored dresses…and all that with at the background a grand sun rise behind the banana plants. At 6.00 the elections were declared opened.

The elections were extremely well organised. It appears that during the voting process there’s absolutely no way to cheat. Two observers of each a different party, together with two independent monitors (usually youth from another constituency) were observing the voting process and also checked if the voters’ pictures matched (all registered voters could be identified by pictures!). It was quite a process to: first a voter has to show their voters’ card and ID, then another person paints a nail black, the next step is the handing out of the ballot that was stamped, another person than explained how to fill in the ballot and finally someone was overseeing if the voter actually only put one ballot in the box.

There were some discussions right from the start by the opposition about people who are not able to vote because they haven’t been able to register. Since only those that were registered in the previous elections of 2006 could receive a voters’ card, all those youth that turned 18 after that were not able to vote. It seems a lot of others also weren’t able to or interested to register as only about 50% of Zambians have been registered. The opposition party, the patriotic front of Sata, raised this issue and seems not to want to accept defeat this time around. He’s quite sure about himself as right after the elections he announced it was useless to count the votes as his victory was already quite clear. Now a couple of days after the elections it appears Banda, the acting president of the MMD, who has taken over from the recently diseased president Mwanawasa, seems to be winning. A third candidate was HH (Hakainda Hishilema), who seems to be most popular amongst intellectuals. But obviously that group is too small to have a chance of winning.

We visited about 13 polling stations in schools and clinics along the Great North Road, up to about 100 km outside of Lusaka in Chibombo District. There were some quite deserted places and it was a great opportunity for us to be able to visit those places. The road towards them was beautiful, the country site is starting to turn green as the rains are slowly starting, and in Zambia you can look very far and never see a single house. If we did see villages they were lively, and the very far villages with the little huts were quiet. One of the villages was within the work area of the Gossner Mission, where Peter knew a lot of people. He asked someone to show us around the clinic, and he showed us how they were using the solar power and how they were growing food. In this clinic unfortunately there hasn’t been a clinical officer for a very long time as nobody seems to want to go to a deserted place without public transport.
When we were on the way Peter made a lot of people very happy as he picked them up to give them a ride towards the polling station. Since the cars had posters on them with ‘International Observers, Presidential Elections’ on them people also knew we were going the same way.

In the first couple of stations Lieve and myself were welcomed by presiding officers and shown around the station, but after a couple we had seen it and were finding a shady place somewhere to watch African life go past us. We’d look around and see the children play with bottles and tires, or we’d see the women carrying buckets on their heads and the men carrying wood. It was 36 degrees C so quite hot, so we drunk a lot of water. As a result we’ve also seen many types of pitt latrines from the inside; there were clean ones, dirty ones, those with an air pipe on them and those without, those that were dark or painted yellow and different types of holes everywhere.

At the final station they were going to collect all the votes of the area and they would count of all them again there to be absolutely sure of correct counting. We expected it could take as long as midnight there, especially as there was no electricity so the counting would take place by candlelight. Since we weren’t allowed to be in that process, we might be up for a long wait in the car. Luckily we were able to hitch a ride from someone local who said he was going to Lusaka. Of course he wasn’t but he managed to find someone who could take us, but not after having shown us off to all of his mates. By 19.00 we were back at the mission.


Life at the Veranda

Life at the veranda is beautiful, a true joy! We are now at a veranda, breakfast, drinking coffee and gorgeous weather. This particular veranda is a very special one as an artist has made a real work of art of the tiles on the floor, showing some of African life on it. It’s called: Where there’s nothing, there’s always something. There’s a lot of green around, mainly passionflowers and grapes and we’re looking out a compound with a purple Jakaranda and bright orange flamboyant tree. A light breeze waves over the porch, carrying a sweet sense of flowers. A small piece of paradise.

However…it’s not always paradise at the veranda. Around 6.00 pm, when the sun goes down, it starts. It starts to get to live. The mosquitoes are buzzing around you and if you don’t have a long sleeved shirt and long trousers and haven’t sprayed yourself, they’ll surely attack. Above our heads there’s flies, big moths, and some kind of weird brown beatle, who seem to do their very best to hit whatever they can at a high speed, that includes me. When I look down there’s the occasional huge spider with long legs, that I find quite scary. Nobody seems to bother too much about them here and usually there’s someone that will step on them. One specific kind seemed to have to be killed for sure as they just might be poison ness. I am extending my limits, as I seem to dare killing just a little bit bigger spiders each time. Well, I hope I’ll get used to them and of course I can always keep my feet of the floor and put them on a chair.