It's the night before "the divine day" as President Salva Kiir calls it, when Southern Sudanese will go to the polls and vote for unity with the North or separation as an independent country. Tomorrow has been coming for decades and yet things seem strangely normal. Today John and I went out for a rice and matoke lunch, walked around the market looking for furniture for our new home, and made homemade pizza with our compound neighbors. It was a fun and fairly quiet day. Tonight the sound of frogs singing and overripe mangoes falling on the roof is louder than the sirens and firecrackers, which I take to mean that life is in balance here.
Although the atmosphere seems quiet, there is a nervous excitement in the air. Everyone is ready to vote and finally bring closure to years of pain. On our flight from Nairobi to Juba, John and I sat next to a tall, striking Sudanese woman. We asked why she was traveling and she said simply, "I'm going home to vote." Her face broke into a giant smile and she turned to look out the window, signaling that was all she had to say on the matter. And that is how it should be. John and I are excited to be here for such a historic time, but we understand this is not our historic time. It's like we arrived among the track-layers the moment before the golden spike was driven into the center of the Transcontinental Railroad... or were dropped into Berlin as the first chunk of the wall came down... or popped onto the Santa Maria seconds before Columbus spotted land. We are witnesses to history, but not participants.
For us tomorrow will be quiet. We will go to church, maybe take a walk, but mostly hang out in the compound. Tomorrow is Sudan's moment to redraw the world map with their votes. It's our time to, well, stay out of the way. To our Sudanese friends and colleagues, we give only our most sincere good wishes and our prayers for peace.
-Stephanie
Photo courtesy of France 24
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