National Presidential Elections were held throughout the country last Saturday. We haven't mentioned it because there was so much uncertainty about how things would go... and lots of warnings to be prepared for the worst. Sometimes things flare up so fast -- especially here where there is palpable discontent with the high rates of unemployment and the dismal state of social services and infrastructure. But as far as we know, everything seems to have gone off well. BBC has announced "free and fair" elections. There were over 4000 international election observers posted throughout the country to ensure this, and to report on anything seeming a bit fishy. There were a few political skirmishes here and there, but people turned out to vote peacefully in record numbers. We were told something like 2.6 million voters registered for this election -- around 93-95% of the voting population. And people have high hopes for positive changes.

So far, five days later (as today is Thursday), the word is that somewhere between 17-19% of the votes have been officially tallied and counted. It will take a while before any results will be announced. At first, radio stations and party spokespeople, even the UN and NGOs were hearing all kinds of info, some of it conflicting. Whenever a tentative result was announced, whichever side was in the lead at that moment would claim it was winning. So now, we don't hear anything. Most of the country is expecting a runoff election to take place in a few more weeks. There were 7 candidates on the ballot on Saturday, and no clear winner as of yet. Seats in Parliament were up for grabs, and historically the North and West (predominantly Temne) support the APC party and the East and South (predominantly Mende) support the SLPP (current party in power). Of course this is a huge oversimplification of things, but basically those are the two parties with the largest bases of support, and typically over the last 30-40 years or so, power goes back and forth between the two. It's possible that some seats in Parliament will change and there might be some shifts... that's what people are waiting for as well as to hear if there's going to be a Presidential runoff or not.

This election is the first one since the end of the civil war without UN forces running the show. Some newspapers have reported this fact and I think its probably a big deal. Things are stable. The elections were peaceful. These are all good signs. We were advised to stock up on food, water, fuel... and be prepared to stay home for days if things got messy. CRS shut down early two days last week due to political rallies on the streets and I think things in Freetown will be slow -- especially if there's a runoff -- not much work will happen until the middle of next month probably, once its all really and truly finished. Keep your fingers crossed and your good wishes coming.

In other news, we are leaving Freetown on Monday. Dan has accepted a position in Uganda, so we're on our way there. I'll keep you posted as I know more. I'm interviewing as well, and we'll see how things go. Hopefully you've glimpsed a little bit of what our life is like in Sierra Leone --there's lots of stuff I didn't write about -- but we're hoping just to stay in touch this way, and let you all know that we're ok. Thanks for checking up on us every once in a while! Talk to you soon.