I took my Chinese five year old this morning and he wanted to know what was wrong with my finger, so I explained about voting yesterday. He then asked if I had chosen "something different" and I said yes. He still wanted to know why I hadn't washed the mark off my finger and I had to explain that too. His final remark was he had thought I was "an England person"? Good questions I thought.
Have been running round town doing errands today and everyone is sitting waiting for results to be announced. At Dandaro the gate guards were tuned in to the local radio station and one of them was telling the others possible results so far. In the Deli in Borrowdale Village the tv was switched to a South African news channel. Everyone is now just waiting, still with a degree of optimism, but waiting to see just what happens next.
I queued for four hours yesterday. In the first part we hardly moved in two hours. There seemed to be confusion over whether people were in section A, B or AB for the ward and there were different stations for these. At one point it was being said that people who weren't on the voters' roll were suddenly being allowed to join the queue - I am still not sure what exactly was happening there. A whole lot of bystanders tried to jump the line and this made the people around me get really angry. I began to think it was not going to end well but eventually the queue jumpers thought better of it. After that the line seemed to move a lot faster and I eventually got to cast my vote. One now just has to hope and pray it is a fair election and the people's choice will be respected.
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