Obama-land

Despite the delay, I want to tell the story of our experiences here in Uganda during the presidential election earlier this month. As many of our friends and family know, for a very long time Danny and I had eagerly anticipated the election with high hopes. And so we found ourselves with a handful of fellow ex-patriot Americans at 3am on election night (7pm EST) huddled around a small television waiting for the polls to close and results to start to come.

As a preface to the rest of this blog, I ask anyone reading to name the president of Uganda, and, for bonus points, state the year of the last Ugandan presidential election. Difficult, eh? Of course many of us (including myself until 4 months ago) don’t know the answer to these questions because Ugandan politics has little effect on our lives. The same cannot be said for the impact of the election of the president of the United States to people in Uganda, thus the race was followed intensely from this tiny equatorial, developing nation in East Africa.

The reasons for the interest in the election varied, but there was one commonality: people here loved Barack Obama. There was the boda boda (a motorcycle taxi) driver who Danny uses daily and spent every trip debating politics in an incredibly sophisticated manner. There were my colleagues in the hospital, who harbored perhaps a more common, educated skepticism of the Bush administration and knew the latest election updates before I did (right down to who won the previous evening’s debate, or how much Palin’s wardrobe cost). There were those who equated the possible election of McCain with a continuation of the war- the war where their loved ones (Ugandans) have been recruited and trained to serve as poorly paid “security forces” for private American interests located in Iraq. And then there were those who knew little about politics, but simply saw the election of a man with East African heritage and dark skin to perhaps the most powerful and important position in the world as a symbol of hope, and a promise for better things to come.

Our election night party in Mbarara was a mellow affair, and centered around CNN coverage which luckily was shown on the one and only available channel. The only interruption in CNN coverage occurred in true Ugandan fashion when for 30 minutes the local TV station decided to show footage of people in Kampala at an election night party who themselves were watching CNN (yes, we watched people watching CNN for 25 minutes- seriously). But the coverage returned, and so we huddled around the television in the wee hours of the morning as McCain conceded and Obama was elected president.

Now I’ll admit that I was delighted at the result, but was not prepared for next couple of days… It began as I walked into the hospital, where friends and colleagues were filled with emotional and heart-felt congratulations. As I walked through town, in lieu of the usual “how are you muzungu?” (common greeting to a white person), I instead had shouts of “Obama!!” directed at me from inside shops, from across the street and even from boda boda stands. If I smiled and gave a thumbs-up, an excited chorus of cheers and handshakes would follow. The buzz continued for many days, with such demonstrations as free large Obama posters inside the daily newspaper (we’re definitely bringing one home…). It seemed that East Africa itself had actually won the presidency of the United States.

And, at the end of the day, I admit to really enjoying telling people that I now come from Obama-land.