An Election Excerpt
As promised (and a few weeks late, as usual) you may find below a short description of my role in the August 11 elections. It is an excerpt from a report I wrote for Sewanee about my internship in Sierra Leone, so I apologize in advance if it seems excessively self-centered. Enjoy!
Questions/Comments?
Email me at pauledixon@gmail.com!
-Paul
- - - - - - -
11 am, August 11. Outside Lumley, Freetown.
The mob pushed in on us.
Emmanuel shoved by, shouting "Snap everything, Paul!" before vanishing into the crowd.
Angry faces stared at us four Westerners - Rachel from England, Joanne from Ireland, Patrick from Australia and myself, a quiet American college sophomore disgorged from the chilly interior of a British Airways jetliner into the morass of Freetown, Sierra Leone a mere two months before. It was my first time existing in the potpourri of countries that make up a vast and complex region of the world commonly known as Africa.
They jostled around us, fighting for the chance to speak. We had only arrived at the polling station thirty seconds before, hopping out of Emmanuel's decrepit sedan that had a tendency to stall when we went uphill, a common occurrence in Freetown, a costal city rapidly sprawling up into the surrounding mountains, struggling to accommodate refugees fleeing West Africa's conflicts. After a decade of war Freetown isn't much besides a gridlock of impromptu football games on decaying streets, but for the human beings, referred to in the sanitary development literature authored by United Nations and World Bank consultants as "Internally Displaced Persons" and "War Affected Individuals," who watched their sisters be raped by international peacekeepers, their parents decapitated and their own arms hacked off with a machete, even the slums of Freetown may seem to be a beautiful oasis of progress.
No one knows exactly how they manage to survive. Twenty years ago the slum-dwellers could eek out an subsistence-agriculture existence on plots of land upcountry cleared from unrelenting jungle, but the pavement of Freetown, a relic of the euphoric development of the post-Independence era forty years ago, allows for only the occasional hillside garden constantly in danger of being swept to sea during the onslaught of the rainy season. Most days the slum-dwellers hawk their wares in the streets - bread and pastries cooked over a charcoal fire, plantains and pineapples, plastic packets of water, imported goods: sausage from Brazil, rice from Vietnam, crackers from Turkey, orange juice bottled in Lebanon but grown in Florida, windshield wipers and car antennas from China, cheese from South Africa, cell phone faceplates from India. The more fortunate shop keepers sit behind their counters, surrounded by an equally global assortment of goods and spend their days waiting for customers listening to battery powered radios and are shielded from the hot sun or pouring rain by a zinc sheeting roof. The slum-dwellers who have some skill spend the day toiling at community cooperatives as carpenters or metalworkers crafting furniture and other household items. Those who know how to drive rent a car from a wealthy family member, neighbor or friend - everyone seems to have at leas one well-off acquaintance - and drive passengers around the city for 800 Leones - the equivalent of 27 American cents. The women, for the most part, do back breaking work cleaning and cooking outside the shacks of plastic refugee sheeting, dirt floors, cinder blocks and zinc sheets that are considered houses while also taking care of a flock of children. The children are sometimes their own, sometimes the neighbor’s who is selling goods at the market, sometimes their 14-year-old daughter's. The children happily play among the rocks and gravel for a few years before they are sent to school if the family has enough money to pay school fees, but if the family isn't doing so well financially or if a brother has taken educational priority over his sister (who is just expected to get married in a few years anyway, so why bother with education?), then the child will be sent out into the streets to beg and sell rice and fish sauce from brightly colored plastic containers. Since there's only so much money that can be made in a country where the vast majority of people live a single US dollar a day, such efforts at entrepreneurship are often futile, so many of the youth take to the streets to play football to a sound track of car horns and Sierra Leonean pop music.
Today was different. There were no youth with their footballs, no sellers hawking their goods or radios blaring music. Instead, the residents of the slums queued in lines snaking across schools, churches and mosques. Some had arrived during the early hours of the morning and had been patiently standing for hours - this was the most important day for their country in the past five years, as their mark on the ballot today would determine the nation's direction, electing a leader to chart a course out of the troubled waters of African politics into a realm of the seemingly unachievable goals of good governance: transparency, accountability, democracy...
As an International Observer, I was supposed to help ensure the elections were the first stop along that journey to good governance - specifically free and fair. Rachel, Patrick and Joanne scurried about, talking to voters, local observers, party officials and polling station staff and recording their observations. I had two cameras hanging from my neck and a notebook bulging from my pocket. Emmanuel, the Sierra Leonean director of the Society for Democratic Initiative (SDI), has been driving us around all day to various polling stations; up until now they had been peaceful, with only a few minor violations of electoral policies, such as seals not be correctly placed on ballot boxes. The Lumley station, however, had hundreds of screaming people outside it surrounding a green SUV.
As observers, we were not supposed to participate in the electoral process, but to simply watch and write down the proceedings. However, now we were in the middle of a mob threatening to attack the owner of the vehicle. We were between the car and the mob, and if we didn't intervene, it would only be a matter of seconds before the screaming mass of people ripped the car apart. We struggled to understand the local language and gradually pieced together the story: the owner of the vehicle apparently had stolen a ballot box from the polling station and had hundreds of empty ballots in his trunk. An lady, her face chiseled by long hours under the African sun, clenched my wrist and pulled me to the back of the vehicle where several young men were preparing to rip the trunk off the car and take back the supposedly missing ballot box. I was between them and the car. They paused when they saw me, as if I would support them in their rather violent solution to the problem. I looked around. Rachel, Joanne and Patrick were on the other side of the vehicle, talking to the owner of the car. I was alone in a sea of black faces.
I wasn't ready for that. I had never been to Africa before, but I had taken some political science classes and read a few books, so I thought I was prepared. I had malaria medicines, extra batteries for my cameras, and a rain jacket for the rainy season. I knew the textbook definitions for the political development catchphrases: good governance, transparency, and accountability. But nothing could have prepared me for that moment, standing alone between an angry mob and a car and its owner. I was only 18, having convinced Emmanuel into allowing me to observe the elections with SDI, thinking I could just take pictures all day and watch from a distance if violence broke out. Suddenly however, a mob of Sierra Leoneans were expecting me to help them. I wasn't sure what to do.
I raised my hands. The mob paused and began to quiet down, waiting for me to issue a decree like a prophet delivering a sermon. I had a young man who appeared to be one of the mob's leaders explain what they wanted. I was probably ten years younger than the majority of the people in front of me, but my pale white skin had thrust me into the spotlight. This was their election, their problems and yet they wanted me to sort it out for them. I thought of what would happen if a foreigner came to my home and observed the elections; that person would be considered an invader trying to influence the democratic process, but I was being treated as a messiah sent to alleviate their suffering. I glanced around, hoping one of the other Westerners would wade towards me. It didn't look promising. I stalled for time by “snapping” a few pictures of the rear of the car; which seemed to satisfy the mob. Two teenagers approached with stones in their hands, ready to smash the windows so they could pull the suspected ballot box from the back of the car. I turned and peered through the tinted glass – but I failed to see any election materials in the car.
I glanced over at Rachel and Joanne, who seemed to be in a similar situation and were talking to the vexed owner of the car. Rachel saw my desperate glance pleading for help and had the owner open one of the doors to the car so she could look for the supposedly stolen election materials, which he adamantly denied having. Joanne and I distracted the people on either side of the car, asking them to explain again the problem.
Rachel couldn't find any stolen ballots, but she did find a box which contained SLPP (the incumbent political party) registration cards, which were perfectly legal to have as they were not “sensitive” voting materials. We explained that to the mob. They weren't very happy about it – most were APC (the opposition party) supporters, but as they calmed down they realized that ripping the car to shreds wouldn't accomplish much. The situation de-escalated. They thought we were saving their elections, and I guess we did calm down the crowd. But we didn't really do all that much besides evaluate the situation, identify and investigate the root cause, and announce our findings– something they certainly didn't need us Westerners to fly thousands of miles to their country to do for them. They could have easily done the same thing, but instead they were ready to turn to violence. Why?
Questions/Comments?
Email me at pauledixon@gmail.com!
-Paul
- - - - - - -
11 am, August 11. Outside Lumley, Freetown.
The mob pushed in on us.
Emmanuel shoved by, shouting "Snap everything, Paul!" before vanishing into the crowd.
Angry faces stared at us four Westerners - Rachel from England, Joanne from Ireland, Patrick from Australia and myself, a quiet American college sophomore disgorged from the chilly interior of a British Airways jetliner into the morass of Freetown, Sierra Leone a mere two months before. It was my first time existing in the potpourri of countries that make up a vast and complex region of the world commonly known as Africa.
They jostled around us, fighting for the chance to speak. We had only arrived at the polling station thirty seconds before, hopping out of Emmanuel's decrepit sedan that had a tendency to stall when we went uphill, a common occurrence in Freetown, a costal city rapidly sprawling up into the surrounding mountains, struggling to accommodate refugees fleeing West Africa's conflicts. After a decade of war Freetown isn't much besides a gridlock of impromptu football games on decaying streets, but for the human beings, referred to in the sanitary development literature authored by United Nations and World Bank consultants as "Internally Displaced Persons" and "War Affected Individuals," who watched their sisters be raped by international peacekeepers, their parents decapitated and their own arms hacked off with a machete, even the slums of Freetown may seem to be a beautiful oasis of progress.
No one knows exactly how they manage to survive. Twenty years ago the slum-dwellers could eek out an subsistence-agriculture existence on plots of land upcountry cleared from unrelenting jungle, but the pavement of Freetown, a relic of the euphoric development of the post-Independence era forty years ago, allows for only the occasional hillside garden constantly in danger of being swept to sea during the onslaught of the rainy season. Most days the slum-dwellers hawk their wares in the streets - bread and pastries cooked over a charcoal fire, plantains and pineapples, plastic packets of water, imported goods: sausage from Brazil, rice from Vietnam, crackers from Turkey, orange juice bottled in Lebanon but grown in Florida, windshield wipers and car antennas from China, cheese from South Africa, cell phone faceplates from India. The more fortunate shop keepers sit behind their counters, surrounded by an equally global assortment of goods and spend their days waiting for customers listening to battery powered radios and are shielded from the hot sun or pouring rain by a zinc sheeting roof. The slum-dwellers who have some skill spend the day toiling at community cooperatives as carpenters or metalworkers crafting furniture and other household items. Those who know how to drive rent a car from a wealthy family member, neighbor or friend - everyone seems to have at leas one well-off acquaintance - and drive passengers around the city for 800 Leones - the equivalent of 27 American cents. The women, for the most part, do back breaking work cleaning and cooking outside the shacks of plastic refugee sheeting, dirt floors, cinder blocks and zinc sheets that are considered houses while also taking care of a flock of children. The children are sometimes their own, sometimes the neighbor’s who is selling goods at the market, sometimes their 14-year-old daughter's. The children happily play among the rocks and gravel for a few years before they are sent to school if the family has enough money to pay school fees, but if the family isn't doing so well financially or if a brother has taken educational priority over his sister (who is just expected to get married in a few years anyway, so why bother with education?), then the child will be sent out into the streets to beg and sell rice and fish sauce from brightly colored plastic containers. Since there's only so much money that can be made in a country where the vast majority of people live a single US dollar a day, such efforts at entrepreneurship are often futile, so many of the youth take to the streets to play football to a sound track of car horns and Sierra Leonean pop music.
Today was different. There were no youth with their footballs, no sellers hawking their goods or radios blaring music. Instead, the residents of the slums queued in lines snaking across schools, churches and mosques. Some had arrived during the early hours of the morning and had been patiently standing for hours - this was the most important day for their country in the past five years, as their mark on the ballot today would determine the nation's direction, electing a leader to chart a course out of the troubled waters of African politics into a realm of the seemingly unachievable goals of good governance: transparency, accountability, democracy...
As an International Observer, I was supposed to help ensure the elections were the first stop along that journey to good governance - specifically free and fair. Rachel, Patrick and Joanne scurried about, talking to voters, local observers, party officials and polling station staff and recording their observations. I had two cameras hanging from my neck and a notebook bulging from my pocket. Emmanuel, the Sierra Leonean director of the Society for Democratic Initiative (SDI), has been driving us around all day to various polling stations; up until now they had been peaceful, with only a few minor violations of electoral policies, such as seals not be correctly placed on ballot boxes. The Lumley station, however, had hundreds of screaming people outside it surrounding a green SUV.
As observers, we were not supposed to participate in the electoral process, but to simply watch and write down the proceedings. However, now we were in the middle of a mob threatening to attack the owner of the vehicle. We were between the car and the mob, and if we didn't intervene, it would only be a matter of seconds before the screaming mass of people ripped the car apart. We struggled to understand the local language and gradually pieced together the story: the owner of the vehicle apparently had stolen a ballot box from the polling station and had hundreds of empty ballots in his trunk. An lady, her face chiseled by long hours under the African sun, clenched my wrist and pulled me to the back of the vehicle where several young men were preparing to rip the trunk off the car and take back the supposedly missing ballot box. I was between them and the car. They paused when they saw me, as if I would support them in their rather violent solution to the problem. I looked around. Rachel, Joanne and Patrick were on the other side of the vehicle, talking to the owner of the car. I was alone in a sea of black faces.
I wasn't ready for that. I had never been to Africa before, but I had taken some political science classes and read a few books, so I thought I was prepared. I had malaria medicines, extra batteries for my cameras, and a rain jacket for the rainy season. I knew the textbook definitions for the political development catchphrases: good governance, transparency, and accountability. But nothing could have prepared me for that moment, standing alone between an angry mob and a car and its owner. I was only 18, having convinced Emmanuel into allowing me to observe the elections with SDI, thinking I could just take pictures all day and watch from a distance if violence broke out. Suddenly however, a mob of Sierra Leoneans were expecting me to help them. I wasn't sure what to do.
I raised my hands. The mob paused and began to quiet down, waiting for me to issue a decree like a prophet delivering a sermon. I had a young man who appeared to be one of the mob's leaders explain what they wanted. I was probably ten years younger than the majority of the people in front of me, but my pale white skin had thrust me into the spotlight. This was their election, their problems and yet they wanted me to sort it out for them. I thought of what would happen if a foreigner came to my home and observed the elections; that person would be considered an invader trying to influence the democratic process, but I was being treated as a messiah sent to alleviate their suffering. I glanced around, hoping one of the other Westerners would wade towards me. It didn't look promising. I stalled for time by “snapping” a few pictures of the rear of the car; which seemed to satisfy the mob. Two teenagers approached with stones in their hands, ready to smash the windows so they could pull the suspected ballot box from the back of the car. I turned and peered through the tinted glass – but I failed to see any election materials in the car.
I glanced over at Rachel and Joanne, who seemed to be in a similar situation and were talking to the vexed owner of the car. Rachel saw my desperate glance pleading for help and had the owner open one of the doors to the car so she could look for the supposedly stolen election materials, which he adamantly denied having. Joanne and I distracted the people on either side of the car, asking them to explain again the problem.
Rachel couldn't find any stolen ballots, but she did find a box which contained SLPP (the incumbent political party) registration cards, which were perfectly legal to have as they were not “sensitive” voting materials. We explained that to the mob. They weren't very happy about it – most were APC (the opposition party) supporters, but as they calmed down they realized that ripping the car to shreds wouldn't accomplish much. The situation de-escalated. They thought we were saving their elections, and I guess we did calm down the crowd. But we didn't really do all that much besides evaluate the situation, identify and investigate the root cause, and announce our findings– something they certainly didn't need us Westerners to fly thousands of miles to their country to do for them. They could have easily done the same thing, but instead they were ready to turn to violence. Why?
posted by Paul at
4:33 AM
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