Elections: The Day Before

So right now, I'm sitting in the guest room of Jess and Bev's house enjoying the fact that we still have electricity, internet, and our phones are still calling out. There may be a couple of questions going through your mind right now regarding that sentence and I'll try to explain:

1) Why am I at Jess and Bev's? - Tomorrow is election day. Campaigning in Uganda, especially on the last day before votes are made involve some candidates being so kind as to give out free beer in order to "encourage" voting for them. The potential for mayhem is there, and due to me being a very big chicken and knowing that even if I hear a "normal" noise I will most likely freak out, I'm camping out here.

2) Why would the internet/phones/electricity not be working? - In order to try and curb some of the plans of people who would like to cause trouble we were warned that all of those things could go out before the elections.

Now, this is the day before elections and I thought I would try and do my best to convey to you all who are not in the lovely "Pearl of Africa" what all unfolds with this potentially rather intense time in Uganda's history. For months (even in some cases years) most conversations centered around the elections as the country would vote again for various offices, but especially for the president. Our current president has been in office for 25 years and many people are desiring change, although in my opinion none of his opposition would be successful in bringing that even if they did win. Because he's been in office so long, and the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia have just gone down, there is a lot of talk of that to happen here, although Uganda is a lot more stable than either of those countries.

One thing that our president is very good at doing is launching the military in full force to the more largely populated areas so that riots don't start. A week ago, we heard a couple of very large booms, looked out and after a little delay saw flares that were shot up into the sky. We found out the next day that they were from the military basically announcing their presence in Jinja and to warn people not to try anything. We see trucks of soldiers and lines of soldiers marching down the streets, and you can't help but be in awe over the organization of it all. Tomorrow, as Ugandans go to the polls, they have a tough decision to make 1) does their vote even really count since there have been allegations in previous elections that votes aren't accurately counted, 2) Who is the best man for the job and 3) Who would be the one to win that would bring the country the least amount of unrest in the days/weeks/months following.

In order to take caution for what could happen, businesses are shut down, schools are closed, and people are even going on lock-down in their homes/compounds. And we're actually taking the lock-down approach as well. At lunch, we sent our employees home and by seven our gate was locked. Tomorrow the gate will remained lock for the day. None of us (unless our staff goes to vote) are allowed to leave the compound, and that may continue into Saturday and even potentially after that depending on how everything goes down. Everyone's basically stocked up on food and supplies, has escape routs planned, and is making the most of time to communicate with people so they don't worry.

I'm not informing everyone of these things to make you think that we're in a war-zone with bullets flying by, because right now it's literally silent outside of my window. I'm just asking that you all would lift our little country (which is the size of Oregon) into prayer. A lot of chaos could come from this election if people react in their pride and anger. Please pray for peaceful and fair elections, for our country to accept whatever the results may be, and that even after the elections the losers wouldn't try to stir up any problems. This is definitely going to be interesting and I'll do my best to keep everyone posted.