The Campaign comes to Mada

pre-election fun

Yay for MI!

In 2008 I was in Ohio, volunteering on election-day, knocking on doors and making lots and lots of phone calls. Four years later, I was sitting in a hotel room in Madagascar constantly pressing refresh on my laptop.. Completely different experiences, but both will always be memorable nights. This year, since the need for Obama campaign volunteers in Madagascar was so low, my two friends and I got a hotel room with wifi instead. We decided to wake up at 3am (7pm in the US) to start watching polls come in. As this plan developed, I thought it would be a good idea to make an hour by hour guide, an electoral map and a tally sheet…all on poster paper to be hung in our hotel room! (And they turned out pretty well, even though I had to draw the map with just a headlamp as the power in the hotel went out…)

Half our states were filled in...

By the time 3am rolled around, we had our own Obama HQ, and it seemed like a great idea since this was going to be an election night without TV coverage! Can you imagine? Anyway, our alarms woke us up at 3am and the fun began. We watched polls come in by constantly refreshing our computers. We took occasional naps and colored in our electoral map as states closed. We skyped with friends and family in the US to fill us in on what we missed and we texted all our other volunteer friends with electoral vote updates. I’m pretty sure it was exactly what the Obama campaign’s US headquarters looked like as well. A 12 ft² room with a mosquito net and a shower curtain for a bathroom door. Anyway…when Ohio was finally called for Obama, all my news website tabs had frozen, and so I relied on the 400 facebook statuses all including the key words “Ohio, re-elected, four more years, OBAMA!” to persuade me that he had won! 

OHIO....and Obama is declared the WINNER

Completed masterpiece....I should probably send this over to CNN

It was a crazy feeling…but, like any campaign HQ, we were extremely ecstatic and watched as the confetti came out of the ceiling…(I wish). We did a little victory dance and then left our hotel to find breakfast (it was 8am afterall…). We went to our favorite restaurant which has a tv that usually plays the French news and with a little persuasion, we convinced the owner to put on BBC in ENGLISH so we could listen to Obama’s victory speech. I’m pretty sure we had more people watching our reactions than people watching the TV, but the speech was so good that Brynna and I couldn’t help but get really excited and clap out loud. There also may have been tears…but that doesn’t surprise anyone who knows me. When customers realized we were Americans, a few of them came over to congratulate us and use their limited English to say YEAH OBAMA!

While experiencing election day in Madagascar is a little different than what I was doing four years ago, I know I’ll always remember coloring in Ohio blue on my hand drawn map of the US! Congrats Obama! Four more years!