30 May 2010

One Week

One week from right now I'll be at the airport getting ready to board my flight, the first, and the longest, in a series that will have me traveling for approximately thirty hours. I have my cat's reservations made. I've requested aisle seats and gluten-free meals for all my flights. I have my Kindle loaded with plenty of reading material. I've packed quite a few things. I've got detailed lists of the things I want Mike to send to the United States and things that can be forwarded on to India from here when he does our packout.

This week, other than get health certificates for both me and the cat, all I have left to do is say good-bye to everyone. I'm sad. I've had so much fun here and met so many great people. I'm not ready to leave it all behind. And I'm especially sad that Mike's going to miss the next few weeks of the pregnancy. Separations we are used to, but separations while pregnant are all new to us.

26 May 2010

The Results Are In

In the election for local councillors on Monday, the ruling party has won by a landslide and eight  opposition parties, including the most popular one, are calling for a re-vote because they hate those results. They are threatening to boycott the rest of the elections this year, including the presidential election in June.

Opposition Demands Re-run Over Fraud Claims

Ruling Party Takes Big Lead

Mike's been gone the last couple days, observing the election and the ballot counting in one of the districts a couple hours away from the city. He returned yesterday. He said that there were some kids hassling people and it was one of the hottest afternoons he'd experienced here, but overall the voting process was smooth, if a bit messy. The ink pots that people dipped their thumbs in to prove they voted proved to be the biggest disaster of the day. The ink was thick and sticky, and people were caught outside trying to wash the ink off, but in reality they were just trying to wipe off enough inky gloop so that they didn't leave sticky, inky fingerprints on everything they touched for the rest of the day. Mike didn't even vote and he got ink all over his hands just from hanging around polling stations.

23 May 2010

Two Weeks

Two weeks from now, I'll be at the airport getting ready to board my plane and leave. Hopefully the cat will be loaded up as well. Hopefully there won't be ash clouds or civil unrest or any other reason for cancellation. If all goes according to plan, twenty-four hours later I'll be home.

The pregnancy is making it hard for me to do all the things I want to do one last time before I leave. I'm too hot, too slow, and too tired. That and I have less time to do those things than I thought I did a month ago, thanks to my departure date moving up a few weeks.

I don't want to leave yet. It's so final. All of our friends here who have seen me through the pregnancy won't get the reward of seeing the baby, since I won't be returning.

Elections Postponed, Again

Word came out late on Friday that elections would definitely be postponed again, from Sunday to Monday. The nonpartisan electoral commission was confident they would have all the id cards and ballots distributed in time for a Sunday election, but the president, along with about ninety percent of the population that goes to church on Sunday, said there's no way elections can happen on a Sunday. We must have another holiday on Monday in order to have the elections! But word came out late last night that the small percentage of Muslims who live here are crying fowl for a Monday elections, because Monday is a Muslim holiday. Traditionally, the government calls two Muslim holidays a year as national holidays, but the one coming up tomorrow isn't one of them. Also, the Muslim community is tiny compared to the rest of the population and many Muslims aren't even Burundian citizens. But it could still be perceived that the president is favoring his own religion rather than treating everyone as equals. It's a sticky situation and so far we haven't heard which way it's definitely going to go.

We had dinner last night with some Burundian friends. The general consensus is that the electoral commission made the right decision in postponing until they were sure they could get it right. But if the government keeps delaying and doesn't announce those postponements until late the night before (announcements have a tendency to come out around 10 pm, once the local tv stations have stopped broadcasting), people are going to be too fed up to bother voting. Every time the government calls a new holiday for voting, the business community gets annoyed by the business they're losing. Employers don't want to close down again, and employees are stuck between enjoying a vacation day but having another day's pay disappear. In a country of 8 million people, less than half are eligible to vote, which makes these holidays even more of a nuisance to the non-voting residents (although, a good deal of the non-voting majority is school children, who probably don't care why they're not in school).

Most people think that at this point the elections will go ahead on Monday. Some of the press I've been reading is sort of unfair, calling the id cards and ballot distribution "embarrassing" mishaps, but people here think they were just business as usual.

Vote Credibility Hangs by a Thread

21 May 2010

Elections Postponed

It's somewhat funny that in this low-tech country, I get my local news from email and RSS reader subscriptions. But, believe it or not, we don't own a radio so can't listen to the local news, and the television stations don't show a lot of news. They don't even run any programing for several hours a day. So when I woke up this morning and saw that there's no CNN-style election coverage on tv, I turned to the internet.

The news online this morning is that today's election has been postponed until Sunday. There's been a delay in distributing the ballots to all the polling places, apparently. Big surprise. But this begs the question,  Is today still a holiday? It was only declared a holiday so that people could vote. Should I be getting ready for work right now? Mike's already left for the day (he's an observer) and I'm dying for him to call me with an update. But since he hasn't called, that means he's too busy so I shouldn't call him. Everyone I know is too busy working for the elections, and my official assignment is to stay home and not get stressed out. (I know that's better for me than running around observing elections, but it's so boring, especially for someone who loves elections as much as I do.)

AFP: Burundi postpones election, citing paper ballot delay

Nearly real-time updates, if you read French: Voice of Burundi

19 May 2010

It's Election Eve Eve!

Yes, it's the night before the day before the elections. A few hours ago the president announced that not only would Friday be a national holiday, election day, but Thursday as well. The reason: The government didn't give people enough time to pick up their voter ID cards, so they need the time to do it on Thursday before they can vote on Friday. Rumor has it the ID cards were ready a while ago, but when people started showing up to get them, they were just in piles rather than organized alphabetically or some other logical way. So it took hours for each person to pick up his or her card, having to sort through the piles. After a short time, it was decided they would shut down the operation, organize the cards, and try distributing them again. The day before the election.

Friday is the first of five elections this summer, and the first national elections since 2005 (which were the first elections after about 10 years of civil war). It's an exciting time to be here, watching. There are so many parties (nearly 50 for some of the local campaigns), and party flags and party symbols and party handshakes. I like driving around trying to identify the flags. The eagle holding a machete. Two different chicken flags (two splinters of what used to be one party). A flag with a rooster. And is that one a French flag with the party acronym magic-markered onto it?

Friday's elections are communal, then the presidential election is in June, and parliament and other groups will have their elections through September. And each election day is a holiday. I almost wish I were sticking around longer, so I could have more holidays. That, and I love politics so I'm curious to see how this all works out.

A quick look at the headlines this election eve eve:

President hopes God, development win him votes
He has built a lot of schools and hospitals, but the doctors and teachers are constantly on strike because they don't get paid. He's going to need God's help.

Set to vote
Interesting summary.

HRW researcher expelled
Whoops. Maybe not the best way for the ruling party to prove they are in favor of free and open elections. She's the only Human Rights Watch representative in the country.

Since I won't be at work over the next few days, due to the holidays and the weekend, I'll have plenty of time to blog and check in with election results. Everyone's as excited as I am, aren't they?

11 May 2010

Plague of Locusts? Not Quite.

While a plague of locusts sounds like fun, I'm getting plenty of entertainment with our recently elevated numbers of nsenene, a local name for a type of grasshopper in the katydid family. (I learned today that they are all grasshoppers, but short-horned grasshoppers are locusts and long-horned grasshoppers are katydids.) Last week I noticed maybe a handful of them over the course of several days. This morning as I walked through my office compound they were everywhere, alive clinging to walls and dead on the ground.


According to wikipedia, where everything is always true, they are a tasty treat in Uganda "and surrounding countries." I haven't seen anyone here eating them, but we are a surrounding country so maybe folks are chowing down. Apparently though, pregnant women should not eat them because the baby will become deformed, in the shape of a grasshopper. So I'm keeping my mouth shut.

Bugs don't really bother me but I could live without these guys and gals flying off walls and into my face and hair when I walk by.


Their appearance is a sign that the long dry season is on the way. It's not really my favorite season, but it's the last time I'll be seeing all these signs, at least here in Burundi. Mr. and Mrs. Ibis returned last weekend; I heard their call early Sunday morning. And the kingfisher is back. So are the giant frogs. All these seasonal creatures that I didn't realize I'd missed until I noticed they were back.

03 May 2010

Step One: Le Vaccination Contra Rabies

We generally procrastinate with our moving preparations until they are absolutely necessary. Checking the calendar over the weekend spurred me to dig out the cat's vet records... We realized it's absolutely necessary for the cat to get her rabies vaccination immediatement if we have any hope of getting her on a plane with me in June. The rabies vaccination has to be given at least 30 days prior to flying, but no more than a year before. Ellie's last vaccination was last April. And there's a slight chance my travel dates will be moved up, so we want her ready for that if it happens. Did you know that it's May already? That sort of surprised me.

On Saturday we called the one vet in town. She was closed that day for a national holiday and she's always closed on Sunday. We had her come by the house while we were home for lunch this afternoon. (J'aime vet house calls! For an additional $5, the vet will come to your house, which we know after some experience that that is much preferable to bringing the cat into the laboritoire.)

The vet prepared the shot, Mike grabbed the cat, and the vet jabbed her before she even knew what happened. It was the easiest vaccination experience we've ever had. And I'm still the good guy. The cat came out of hiding as soon as Mike left to return to work.

But the vet did not bring a rabies certificate with her. She was expecting us to have a vaccination card, which we've never had for the cats. Luckily I had the certificate from last year, in French, with all the cat's pertinent information, and she took that with her and will deliver the two certificates back to the house later this afternoon. She also said that it will be no problem to prepare a certificate de bonne santee in a few weeks when we are ready to voyager. Will that certificate of good health be in English? We'll cross that bridge when we get to it. I think we can get it translated and notarized for the nice people back at Newark airport (who reportedly tried to turn away an American traveling from Burundi for having a visa from a made-up country).

A tiny bit of my travel anxiety has been alleviated now that the rabies vaccination is taken care of. I always stress out over traveling with the cats. (The fact that we only have one cat now makes me sad, not less stressed out.) And we really, really want her to get on the plane with me as excess baggage. She can't fly in the cabin and by the time Mike flies home we risk it being too warm for her to go in the cargo hold.

P.S. By the time I finished writing this post, the rabies certificates had been delivered. Delivery is one service area that Burundi tends to get right.