Elections

I am a bit hesitant to write this, for fear of tempting the car gods, but as of last Friday our car actually works like, well like a car for the first time since we bought it! A new fuel pump seems to have made all of the difference.

We have another busy few days ahead of us. Yesterday, we played soccer after school (our best showing yet with teams of ten on ten) until 6pm then rushed home to shower before meeting a group for dinner at 7pm. Tonight we are cooking dinner at our house for another couple and their toddler. Tomorrow we are leaving directly from school and driving an hour southeast to Hammamet, where we will be staying for two nights at an all inclusive beach resort. A few different groups from school will be there meaning that we as a large group will basically have the majority of the resort reserved. We should be home sometime in the middle of the day on Sunday so we should be able to post some pictures from the weekend. (We still haven't found our camera cord, but we made a great discovery in the realization that my computer has an SD reader built-in just out of sight under the front edge.)

The elections, from a local perspective, have gone very smoothly. The voter turnout was even better than could have been hoped for and as far as I know there hasn't been any real disturbances as of yet. As far as I know there hasn't been any official outcome reported yet. Originally the officials had said that it would take 12 days to fully count and officiate the ballots, but there were also rumors that it would have happened as early as Monday evening. The only credible leak that I have heard of at this point is that the Moderate Islamic Party has claimed their limit of the allotted seats. This concerns some of the locals because it has been suggested that their desired form of governance would be highly influenced by religion and may equate to a step backwards for individual rights, especially womens' rights. Publicly, from what I can tell, they ran on a platform that intends to create an Islamic democracy modeled after that of Turkey which I think many here would approve of, but only time will tell if they are true to their word.

It has been quite a humbling experience to bear witness to Tunisia's first real elections. On Monday, all those who voted came to work with their fingers still dyed (the method that was used to prevent repeat voters) and wore the ink as a celebratory symbol. Monday morning I said hello to one of the bus drivers (who we also play soccer with) and commented on the nice suit he was wearing. He triumphantly raised his inked finger and said that he had dressed up in honor of voting for the first time.

To be continued...