The Election

Stone Town
Originally uploaded by susiebarber

The election is something that I've wanted to write about since my first week in Thailand. Upon landing in Krabi, one of the first things I saw was a Thai man with an Obama '08 t-shirt. I held off on the post, though, as I saw more and more shirts and buttons, not only in Thailand, but just about everywhere I traveled during my 3 months abroad. I had many, many locals come up and talk to me about the election.

In short, it shocked me how much the rest of the world cares about who we elect and how each country covers our election every night on the evening news. The BBC broadcast both of our conventions live around the world. I saw coverage of daily campaign stops on local news coverage in Thai, Hindi, Nepali, Arabic and Swahili, often leading as the top story. I saw an Obama button on my waiter's shirt when I had my first meal in Kathmandu. The taxi stand in Stone Town, Zanzibar hung a homemade Obama poster on a tree and painted Obama all over the curbs. Throughout Tanzania, I saw Obama painted on the rear windows of vehicles (Bob Marley was also a very popular paint job on vehicles, by the way).

The democratic convention started on my last night in India. Until that time, in both Thailand and India, I had people all excited because they thought that Obama had already won the presidency when he beat Hillary Clinton. I explained the difference between the primaries and general elections at least 30 times during my first month of travel. They all countered with, "But Obama's going to win, right?". When I explained that I didn't know because the polls at the time were close, they look stricken. It was such an odd feeling explaining our political process and seeing how much others care at the same time.

Why did everyone I meet feel so strongly about Obama? I think that in Asia, they feel like he has an understanding of their lives and hardships that no candidate has ever had before. After all, he did live in Indonesia for two years after his mother remarried. Not only did he live there, but for much of their first year, they didn't have a refrigerator or running water. To them he gets it, at least a little.

The support in the Middle East is very obvious. The Iraqi war has cost the region a lot. The number one industry in both Jordan and Egypt is tourism. Both suffered greatly when the war broke out, especially Jordan, who basically lost the entire industry. It's been so bad that about half of the restaurants and hotels have had to close. The tourists are slowly coming back, but not nearly in the numbers they saw before the war. Couple that with the fact that they've taken in over 1.2 million Iraqi refugees, and it's no surprise that they need this war over. McCain believes that we need to stay in Iraq and Obama wants to start phasing us out of there.

Tanzania was also a bit obvious. Obama's father was Kenyan and Kenya shares a border with Tanzania. While Obama never lived there, he has visited a couple of times and stayed in a village with his father's family. Like in Asia, they feel like he's got an understanding of how they live and what their challenges are. Plus he's a "native son" (I actually heard that phrase a couple of times). They can't help but love that.

BBC World News asked their viewers if they were following the US elections and why. There was one email response that they put up on the screen regularly during my time in Egypt and Tanzania. A man in India responded, "America is electing the most powerful man in the world and I live in this world. How can I not care?" Can't put it any simpler than that.

So this time next week, we'll know who our next president will be. Whatever you do, vote on Tuesday and remember that our decision is not just about us.

And just a quick side note: The Nepali were very confused about our party conventions. Most of what they see are people dressed in stupid hats with flashing buttons who are dancing to music and being silly. They consider electing a president to be very serious business. They wanted to know what a party had to do with the election process. I had no idea what to tell them.