Elections

Sundays in Africa....I love them! I haven't spent so much time doing so little in a long time. Yesterday (Saturday), was spent unpacking all of the things we had shipped ahead in the container and getting our shop reorganized and resupplied. We have a short time to get prepared for the team of surgeons coming in about a week, which means we need to get more housing prepared for the team and cooking/living facilities for the families of all the natives that will be coming. Today (Sunday), as I said, has been a lazy day. Since we were not involved today, and we knew church would all be in the Mano language, we chose to stay home and have devotions at home. Neither did we know what time church would even be since the whole country is prevented from using any form of transportation today because of the elections.

A little bit of info on the elections. Guinea has never had free democratic elections in all of its history. It gained independence from France in 1959, and from that time until now, they have been ruled by a dictator. These men have ruled, not because they were the best for the job or the people's choice, but simply because they had the biggest guns. A couple years ago, the longest ruling dictator died followed by a few short-lived military generals that were even less qualified than he, each claiming that they would initiate free democratic elections which everyone knows they so desperately need. The process started several months ago, narrowing the field down from over 30 candidates to just two. That sounds like a good thing, but the problem is that the two remaining are both from the two largest native tribes in the country, which leaves ethnic tensions on the very edge of an outbreak. The final run-off has been postponed several times because of corruption and internal conflicts, but they actually took place today. The whole country was shut down today to prevent people from voting in one village and then all going to another village to vote again and to prevent the possibility of an organized effort to disrupt the whole process. Everyone is tense, uneasy and anxious about what might happen, with a lot of the country nearly shut down for the last several weeks because of all the uncertainty. There have been several outbreaks and riots over the last several months, with quite a few lives lost in the last year. We cautiously walked into the village this afternooon to see what was going on, and it was surprisingly peaceful. We happened to meet a man we knew that could speak some English, and he was headed to the polling station to see what was going on. He invited us to walk along, so we jumped at the chance. We got to walk through the building and meet all of the election officials, even giving them a blessing which brought smiles and handshakes all around. Now we all sit back and wait on the results, praying and hoping that it will go well, not turn violent and be a big step forward for this country and all of the people that so desperately need a political turn for the better. Please join us in prayer over the next couple days as we await the results.

It was so good to walk through the village today, greeting the people, getting reacquainted with people we have learned to know and trying to make new friends for future conversations. It was a very warm day today, reaching the lower 90's, but has been cooling down into the 70's at night.

We go to bed tonight trusting God for safety and for a better future for these wonderful people.