Vote Zambia

We arrived in Lusaka, Zambia for just a day, to make our way to Livingstone to see Victoria Falls. On the way down, there we saw many rallies for the upcoming presidential election, which is today. The rallies we saw were peaceful, and many people on the bus were excited. That being said, elections in Africa are often plagued by some unrest (so it was good to get out of the country’s capital)…or so we thought…

Some hostel mates (here in Livingstone) told us a couple of days ago, the streets were flooded by men with guns and tear-gas, so everyone had to run to the back of the hostel. (Luckily, we weren’t here for that). The people were upset because the ballots that were delivered for today’s election were already filled out, marking the current president. The people are suspicious that the current party will cheat the system…if the current party wins, we’re not sure how the people here will react. The government promised the people for the final results by tomorrow…otherwise they will have to wait until next week.

All the shops are closed, and not too many people are on the streets. Everything is pretty dead…kind of like the Falls we saw yesterday. Unfortunately, we came during the dry season, so there is only a tiny portion that has water. We also learned that a good deal of the water is being diverted for power generation, which the government makes more money off of than the tourism.