Winds of Change - The Referendum Vote

We arrived in south Sudan a few days before the Sunday referendum (January 9th) to see everything in a state of readiness and expectation. Nothing was overlooked. Training classes were underway, informing people of the process of the vote. International observers were in the process of last-minute activities and local scrutineers were going over the process repeatedly.The big day dawned cool but uncharacteristically windy. We watched at sunrise as southern Sudanese worked their way through the dust and gusts to the polling stations, which opened at eight o'clock in the morning. We journeyed to Mabil, only to witness long line-ups of voters patiently waiting for the polls to open in another hour.  It was a remarkable exercise in democracy, held across an entire southern region in ways that some doubted possible.As the poll opened, some women began to dance, but the mood was more one of determination. They were a people set on grasping this one opportunity of a generation and turning it into something meaningful for their children. As appointed observers we had the opportunity to witness the entire process up-close and had the right to question anything that seemed dubious.  I did so on a couple of occasions and the people under question were immediately taken aside and queried as to their validity.  Blind individuals, of which there were many, were taken to a special place where the process and the ballot card was explained to them under the watchful eye of a qualified witness. Women with children were permitted to come to the head of the line for obvious reasons.  No one complained: the vote was about the future anyway.Because we were observers, we took no side. Our task was to make sure everyone qualified could vote, and without any hassle. But you could tell in an instant that the voters were there for only one thing: independence. That became obvious through the day to all the other international observers we met in our travels as well.For Jane and I, along with the team, there was a sense of destiny, of history righting itself. We've been going there for over a decade and were experienced enough to know that this was something southerners had wanted since the 1950s.  It was their moment in time and they took it - not with great jubilation or ardour, but with quiet resolve.  It was a remarkable thing to witness.The video below will show you images of that first day.  I apologize again for the wind noise on the camera, but it gives you a sense of what was happening. Each day this week I'll put up a new video just so that you, too, can witness history manifesting itself in action.