So last night a group of about 40 Peace Corps volunteers here in Peru talked a closed resturant into opening for us because they had a wide screen TV with CNN international. We watched, drank beer and cheered as we heard the results state by state. It was a riot. I was tired and went home at 10PM once I heard that Ohio went blue. So when I got up this morning, I was trying to figure out how to turn on the TV in my family´s home and heard my host dad hollering through the bedroom wall, "Obama gano!" meaning that he won. I started shaking and crying. Ran next door to the tienda just as it was opening at 6AM to talk the owner into turning on his phone service so I could call Sean and Jenni.
All day people have commented to me on the buses and street. On a combi today, as soon as I called out my stop (which means that once my mouth is open I´m identified as foriegn gringa) the man next to me asked about the election and everyone around listened intently. The Peruvians I´ve talked to are quite excited as well, see it as both change in direction and a victory against racism. Very thrilling to see such a sweeping victory for Obama!
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3 comments:
We were watching it all together yesterday night. It was wild, esp. when they (nbc) called Obama as president when CA, OR and Wa had barely closed.
Odile
I hope you can read or see Obama's victory speech, it was beautiful! We are all just so relieved and happy here.
Missing you
That's great you had the chance to watch some of it. The media didn't really address race until he was declared the winner, and then everyone seemed to breath, and it was the focus until today. Now it's all about who he will appoint and the intense challenges that lie ahead. But it was one of those rare times when nobody could be cynical about a large national event. There is a lot of undoing that needs getting done, but there is hope.
Ken
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