We spent Ghanaian Election Day 1996 in Accra. (Not Felix.) Some background: the incumbent president, JJ Rawlings, had come to power 15 years earlier in a military coup, and was elected president upon Ghana’s return to democracy in 1992, though the 1992 elections were considered somewhat irregular. By 1996, the opposition was much better organized and everyone thought there was a real chance that Rawlings could lose to challenger John Kufour.
This caused quite a bit of anxiety in Accra. People we talked with said they were genuinely unsure of who would win, whether there would be electoral violence, and what would happen afterwards if Rawlings lost. They told us to spend election day inside, but we were young and curious and drove around to see what was happening. People were waiting in really, really long lines to vote. We stared, impressed at their patience and commitment, and completely unaware that the same thing could happen in the U.S.
Once the polls closed we were of course eager to find out who won. We didn’t have a TV, and there was only one local channel at the time anyway, the state-run GTV. But we listened to the radio all the time, and anticipated that election results would be broadcast on the evening of the election. They were not!
The next day we ventured out again and found crowds gathered in Black Star Square, where a giant board was being manually updated as election results came in from the districts. The counting took time. And the people waited.
All that is to say, none of this is new. We will stand in line as long as it takes to vote. And we will get the results when all the votes are counted.
Apologies for the non-boat-related post, but this is a pretty big moment in Long Way Home's search for home. Also - our photos of these events are boxed up at CubeSmart and www barely existed back then, so visual evidence was hard to find.
(If you were wondering: Rawlings ended up winning the 1996 elections, and everything remained peaceful. The opposition continued to organize. When his term ended in 2001, he stepped down and his 1996 opponent, John Kufour, defeated Rawlings’ VP to become president.)