Considering how much ambivalence I've encountered among my fellow Kenyans when I ask them about voting, I'm still pretty psyched. This happens to the first time I've actually been able to vote out of the 4 times that I've been eligible. Don't count it as a dereliction of civic duty on my part; I've just never been around for the previous elections. So I definitely didn't want to miss my chance. I even got my voter's card way before the deadline hit (a surprise for a typical procrastinator like myself). Wasn't too happy at the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission's (IEBC) decision to ask people to report back to their voting stations for verification (as if I didn't provide all the necessary details first time around), but they saved face by making the verification an SMS/Online affair. Thanks to this, I even knew beforehand which line I would be in during the voting exercise: No. 11 at the PCEA Enchorro Emuny Primary School in Ngong!
So all I had to do was bide my time and prepare for the day at hand. So today I was up by 4.30 am, done with preparations and out of the house by 5.45 am. Fearing for the worst with regards to my car, I made arrangements to park it within a family friend's compound, which was a convenient 3 minute walk from the voting station. As I drove, it was quite the sight to behold: cars parked along the roadside in droves, and an amorphous massing of people at the school gate. The IEBC had assured people that it would really be an easy process whereby we would just walk in and we'd be shown into which lines we were supposed to queue, so I thought the process would be easy. I was wrong!
So, I walked into the school compound, under the cover of darkness, and just run into total pandemonium. Lines of people as far as the eye can see, and very little indication as to where I was supposed to go. Started to look for an official, but they were few and far-in-between. I had saved a PDF of my voter details, so I had it on my phone screen for easy reference. By the time I did find an official, he just pointed me off to some far off corner and went on his merry way. So, Plan B: walk up to people in lines and find out what specific line they were in. For reference, the IEBC chose the first letter of the first name appearing in your ID as the signifier for the line that you would queue in.
Casting my gaze further afield, I could just barely make out some numbers on classroom doors; so, I just had to look for the door labelled 11. Trust you me, this had already taken all of 15 minutes. But, it wasn't the end. Lines 11 - 13 were actually located on the upper level of the school building, with, up until that point, no obvious observable staircase leading to the polling stations. After asking around, finally settled into one line that I believed was a combination 11/12/13 line; I was relieved of this notion when one Administration Police Officer (AP) walked by, and told us that Line 11 was actually separate from 12/13, which saw me move ahead.
Once I was sure I was in the right line (knock on wood), I was sure that the only thing I'd have to endure was an appreciable wait....but there was more than that. First off, the upper level of that school building was the things that'd make an Emergency Preparedness Coordinator cringe: only one stairwell packed to the brim by the two lines of individuals ascending; a few stragglers milling through the middle, some genuinely geriatric, invalid or with child, and others lost or trying to skip the queue; and to cap it off, this was also the only exit for people who had cast their votes.
The permutations for all the things that could have gone disastrously wrong within that scenario are baffling. Having just completed some Life Support Training courses, I tried to imagine how that understaffed voting station would have dealt with someone suffering a fainting spell, heart attack, etc. My biggest gripe is with the building design specifically. Even on an ordinary school day, if a fire breaks out or a panic arises because of an "explosion", students will basically be trampled in a stampede through that one narrow stairwell. Sometimes we only ever survive because of God's grace because we fail to plan for the simplest eventualities; and as one of my Surgical Consultants (Dr. Oigara) always used to say,
Failing to plan is planning to fail
Of course when you've been in a line for a prolonged period of time, the shady Kenyan characters start to crop up. I'm talking blatant line-cutters, ladies using the ruse of carrying the same child so that they can basically rock up to the line ahead of everyone else; and then they're those irritating characters in the back of the line who act like those ahead of them are slowing down the line, as if we ever had any possibility of influencing the events ahead of us. (these are probably the same impatient individuals who cause a fuss during traffic jams).
So it basically took me 3 hours and 50 minutes to complete this simple task. Mind you, many people tell me that conditions were better this time around. If I'm led to believe that the IEBC has actually learned from its mistakes and performed better this time around, then it would be something of a quantum leap to expect them to have a trouble free election anytime soon. I recognize that they have had some unique challenges this time around (being reconstituted afresh, having their IT Manager murdered, constant court challenges), but some logistical issues are not hard to solve.
First off, they've got to view the voters as mere monkeys, Sheep, or Children, if you please. We are basically showing up to an alien environment, and we are definitely bound to be confused. Their main function is to:
- get us in line
- get us into the voting booth to cast our votes
- get us out so we can go on our merry way without making a nuisance of ourselves
And for Heaven's sake, they need to have a dry-run before the election day so that they can test the system out. Hoping for things to fall into place without any practice when 1000+ sheeple rock up to the spot is impossible. Barring any technical difficulties from their biometric system, they could probably shave off at least one hour from everyone's wait time.
Anyway, the day's done and nothing unbecoming has happened. I'm hoping to just be able to sit things out at home, and hope all things turn out peacefully. At the end of the day, come what may, peace and a normal semblance of life is what we crave for. We can sort out the other political stuff later.
God Bless.
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