Siku ya Uchaguzi

The drivers in Kigoma are at best crazy. In the U.S. pedestrians have the right-of-way in virtually every situation, followed next by bicycles, moving all the way up to the largest of vehicles. In Kigoma, however, the exact opposite is true, priority goes to the powerful; so we spend a good portion of our time walking to and from different locations jumping out of the way of motorcycles, cars, and larger trucks. If we don’t get out of the way fast enough, or not far enough, a quick “beep” from the driver usually does the trick, sometimes followed by a stare-down – heaven forbid they move their hands on the wheel a half-centimeter. Apparently the roads here are two-way, but this is debatable as almost every time we see a car coming down the road it is being passed by another vehicle, giving a very strong impression that the road is a one-way.
To make matters even more interesting on the roads it was just election time, every few hours or so a truck with a massive speaker system would travel down the road blasting a candidate’s greatness over their rival. To say that these speakers were loud would be an understatement; we could virtually pick up the decibel reading on the volume level by how hard our teeth chatter.
The excessively loud truck was just the beginning of the campaigning here however. Every evening we would hear a large commotion happening near the downtown district, basically sounding like a big party. There were also numerous signs posted everywhere and a small amount of tension in the air. Unlike the U.S.’s campaigns where there is virtually no violence during campaigns, just mud-slinging and over ambitious promises, in many African countries, an election is always a nervous time for fear of political instability. In Tanzania, the current ruling party is known as CCM (Chama Cha Mapinduzi), and through the military here they issued a warning stating that they would tolerate zero political instability, which the opposing parties deemed unlawful and asked the CCM to apologize for (the CCM refused because they think they have done nothing wrong). Aside from the threat of violence, the campaigning here had a similar outrageousness that one may find in the states. The only major difference, aside from the violence of course, is that CCM held about 90% of all the power. Tanzania recently became “multi-party”, however most everyone knows that CCM is the only party.
Until this election that is.
The CCM prior to this election promised less corruption (you know the level of corruption is bad when the best they can offer is “less” in the form of government corruption instead of “none”), better infrastructure, and a decrease in poverty. The Tanzanian people feel let down; they’re still dirt poor, the roads are suitable only for an off-road all wheel drive vehicle (complete with helmet and pads), and the corruption level is unwavering. Instead of winning by a complete land-slide, CCM has lost quite a bit of their parliament seats – they used to own 93% of the seats. It has taken about a week for the full results to finally come back in, and CCM’s presidential candidate has won once again, although there is widespread speculation of corrupted vote counts.
There have been a few riots in surrounding towns where we live, but nothing too worrisome. During the week of election we were on complete lock-down, no one was allowed to walk outside of the compound, even to the market. We were escorted by the locals if we were to leave. Sunday, October 31st was Halloween and siku ya uchaguzi (election day). The streets of Kigoma were eerily quiet, almost spooky. The citizens were well aware that they should just get out and vote, than go home and stay quiet…Halloween took and a new level of scariness this year.
Anyway, the elections are over and done with now, and the danger is past. All election day really turned out to be for us was a time of boredom in our compound wondering what was going on, but that’s probably much better than the alternative.