Democracy on the ground... and in the sand.

So, the president of Senegal came to my village recently. Well, technically he stopped in the middle of the road through my village on the way to a bigger town. Still, he did stop, and stuck his head out of the top of his car and spoke to the crowd that turned up for ten minutes or so. I saw him from about twenty feet away, along with a child on each hip and the hundreds of other people lined up alongside the road after waiting for him for two hours in the heat of the afternoon, with no shade, no less. I was seriously doubting my sanity for undertaking such a foolish enterprise, and for forgetting a hat, but on come on, how often does the president of Senegal come to your village? I couldn't miss it.

This appearance came in the midst of a series of two months of political campaigning leading up to the presidential elections, which in Senegal occur every seven years, although beginning with this election, the term limit will be reduced to five years. Abdoulaye Wade, the current president, has been in office since 2000. Before that, Abdou Diouf was president for nineteen years, and he was preceded by Leopold Senghor, who became Senegal's first president when Senegal gained independence from French colonial rule in 1960. For all that history indicates Senegalese voters don't place a high value on variety, this election boasted at least fifteen candidates, including Wade's former prime minister Idrissa Seck and Louis Jacques Senghor, the first President Senghor's grandson. Admittedly, most Senegalese people were only familiar with a handful of the many candidates who put their names forward, but this didn't seem to deter the hopefuls, who arranged rallies and spoke of their leadership ambitions on Senegal's public television station.

A democratic system wherein the primary means for candidates to communicate with the electorate is via state-run television is rather dubious, but the time allotted for election coverage was divided scrupulously evenly among the candidates, although each candidate had to pay an obscene amount of money for the privilege of a few minutes on the air. On the other hand, practicality demands American politicians be rich as well, so criticism on that point is perhaps hypocritical until we can solve the problem of equal political access in our own country, and our free press can't make any great claims to equal election coverage as long as coverage is biased in favor of sensationalism rather than an inclination to provide all candidates with an equal say.

The most interesting thing about all this political campaigning has been the conversations I've had with prospective voters. One day I was traveling to a northern town some distance away and the trip was taking even longer than normal due to the road being torn up for a construction project and I was surprised to hear an elderly man sigh in French, 'Ah, Afrique-- on sait construire, mais on ne sait pas maintenir. (Oh, Africa-- we know how to build, but we don't know how to maintain.)' This comment set off a political discussion in which the entire car participated. I expressed my pleasure that this construction was taking place at all- despite the fact that it was making my journey that day longer, if it got finished, it would undoubtedly make future travels smoother. However, the others did not share my optimistic outlook. 'Political promises!' another man said dismissively. 'The government has been saying they will fix this road for seven years- they are only fixing it now because the elections are coming.' The connection had not occured to me, but this was not the only time I heard allusions to spectacular political promises.

On the television I was hearing promises so outlandish even I, a stranger to the political realities of Senegalese governance, recognized them as unpracticable. Promises to build fancy schools and hospitals, to bring peace and prosperity to the troubled Casamance region. Though these promises were greeted by cheers by people attending the political rallies at which they were made (incidentally a major form of entertainment for the otherwise sleepy social lives of Senegalese people in rural areas), others remained unsurprised and unconvinced by these claims. When I mentioned the elections to two friends of mine, young mothers at their hut, trying to guage whether they intended to vote or not, I was greeted by a tirade about corruption and false promises that took me somewhat aback coming from two seemingly unworldly, uneducated women. They, at least, did not seem to be under any illusions about the nature of these promises, and their complaints were not the only ones I heard.

Knowing the current president was the favorite to win by a long shot, I was also interested to learn how many varying opinions existed even within one family over who would be the best person to lead their country in the years to come. I admit I'm guilty of assuming that in such a patriarchal society the women would likely follow their husband's lead when it came to political affairs, but that was proven to be a fiction formed by my own prejudice rather than basis in fact. Perhaps in other families I might have been closer to the mark, but in my family, at least one of the wives expressed her intention to vote for the president's leading opponent, who was primarily responsible for developing the town of Thies, where the family had lived twenty years, into one of the largest cities in Senegal. The assertion of this candidate's superiority was contradicted by my aunt, saying the only reason Thies had gotten so nice was because this guy had stolen money from the government meant for all into one town. The third wife, who never lived in Thies with the rest of the family, preferred the president, saying simply, 'He fixed Senegal. He brought the roads, and schools. Life is easier now.' This seemed to be the prevailing opinion among most of the people I talked to, and I suppose it makes sense for people who have so little not to care for comlex political rhetoric, and instead reserve judgment for evidence of a measurable impact on their lives.

Another aspect that intrigued me about the whole election process was the problem of voting when such a large portion of the population is illiterate. This especially concerned me in regards to women- in a country where women have little power, it seemed of the utmost importance that they should vote for whoever they thought served their best interests. I was also worried about whether women would be inclined to vote at all, especially the older ones who'd had little access to education. However, on the day of the election, I was pleasantly surprised to see women lined up outside classrooms at the elementary school waiting in the sun for their turn to vote, many of whom I knew could not read or write. The solution was revealed to me when the women of my household returned from voting and children squabbled over who would get the left over palm-sized sheets of paper printed with the names and pictures of the candidates the voter did not choose- these sheets, also printed with each candidate's signature color as another cue for those voters who couldn't read, served as easily distinguishable ballots for every one involved.

I heard references of political corruption from several different people, but from what I can tell, Senegal suffers much less from that particular affliction than most other African nations- not that that's saying much. But whatever the complaints, I was impressed by the turnout in my little town, and it's hard to feel too discouraged about the state of democracy when a student travels over twelve hours in a hot, cramped car to go to his hometown to exercise his right to vote, or a group of people pile onto a cart hitched to a skinny horse to drive miles through the desert to cast their ballots.