So I'll update to tell how the election was for us over here in Tanzania. I know a lot of folks who read this don't agree with me, but I am a firm Obama supporter. I won't go into my reasons for all of that but it's relevent to the story so here goes...

All of the americans at Amani are Obama supporters and we were very excited to see what would happen with the elections on Tuesday night/Wed morning our time. We decided to get a hotel room (split between 5 of us was pretty cheap) which had cable so we got CNN, BBC and Al Jazerah, all of which were covering the election results as they came in. They started to actually come in at about 2am our time. Some of us got sleep, I maybe got an hour of dozing but would wake up every time they gave this sound to let us know they had a new projection coming in. Finally at 6 am they declared Obama the winner, and then we got to see his speech a little after 8 am. After which I went to Amani until lunch, then went home to sleep because I literally couldn't keep my eyes open even while doing active work.

It was a pretty crazy and fun ride! Obama mentioned something about "people huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of the world" and our director, who had stopped by on the way to work to watch the speech with us, cheered even though it didn't quite apply to us. Close enough. Of course everyone here is really excited - Kenya actually had a national holiday on Thursday because Obama's father is Luo (their second largest tribe). They are also putting in electricity, a tarmac road, and running water into his grandmother's village, I suppose in anticipation of a presidential visit. I think it's a bit much (since Obama met his father all of one time) but I'm sure the villagers are happy to have it ;).

Anyhow, maybe I'm being overly optimistic but I am hoping that this change might make me proud to tell people what my nationality is again!