Well last night was pretty epic around here. It started out with a very vegetably salad and part of a sandwich (on WHOLE WHEAT bread) at a terrific restaurant, but as you may guess, food was not the only way in which the night was epic.
We returned to the Pousada to try to watch some election coverage (the five hour difference between here and the west coast complicated matters a bit) and got kicked out of our room by a party pooper or two who didn’t care about what was going on. But we (Meghan and I) made a home for ourselves in the lobby of the hotel starting around eleven at night. We found a particularly lovely election channel and watched some results from the east coast start to come in and then – SURPRISE! – the channel got taken over by a large Jay Leno/Woody Allen (no shit – it was a shocking combination) host on his own late show. We desperately flipped through channels and tried to get the hotel internet to cooperate with us (it apparently didn’t care about the future of the world) until we found a super fuzzy channel that was informing us about the weirdness of American politics. We learned how odd the American electoral system is over and over as Brazilians seem to be amazed by the sheer stupidity inherent in some of the voting procedures that we adhere to. We were also reminded that in Brazil the election results are known (without fail) countrywide two hours after the polls close AND that the voting machines actually work here.
The Brazilians did seem interested to see that Americans were actually turning out to vote because the political apathy of our country is no secret. When they stopped trying to explain that you can win without actually winning in America, they moved on to the life histories of each candidate. (At this point Meghan and I were dying because we hadn’t actually heard any solid numbers for at least forty five minutes.) We heard of John McCain’s history of service and about Obama’s multicultural background. With lots of lovely baby pictures of each included. Precious and all that but there are actual VOTES coming in right now, guys. After the life histories we got to learn about the civil rights movement and America’s racial division. Brazil prides itself on being a racial democracy but the all white anchor crew neglected to mention that there are quite a few problems within the “democracy” that is Brazil. Namely that it doesn’t exactly exist.
After a while the news anchor took us to a party in Sao Paulo with a bunch of expats waiting for results. So the first electoral map we saw all night was a poster on the wall of the party. It looked kind of like something I might have made for a sixth grade politics class with a black outline of the map of the US and the states. The states that had been decided were colored in either red or blue with a crayon. Yup. And the cameraman pointed his camera at the map for a solid few minutes, allowing us to see it in all its glory, while the anchor discussed the votes in the US. She ran us down the list of some of the percentages for some of the easternmost states and we were able to compare those percentages with the colored in states.
We were about to give up hope when the epic saga of the Bush presidency came on the screen. It traced the eight years since 2000, from the fight over pregnant chads to September 11 to multiple wars and the current economic problems. I was standing up at about one thirty about to head to bed when the news anchor interrupted the tale of the past eight years of America’s history with breaking news. And suddenly we knew that the election was projected in favor of Obama. Two more girls walked down the stairs because they had woken up to go to the bathroom…and just in time. Our jaws all dropped as we watched McCain walk onto the stage and concede. We jumped out of our chairs and clustered around the little staticky TV that was hanging in the corner. The man who was working the lobby and had been sitting with us for hours got a little smile and sat back and watched the crazy Americans have a little party in front of him. We became silent and just stared, listening to McCain.
Post McCain, commercials took over. We knew Obama was coming but had no clue when. And they sure knew how to draw it out, showing us the crowd in Chicago over and over (and Oprah – who they referred to as an American legend) before anyone came out on stage. And then when Obama did we stood about five inches from the TV just watching. And he made it worth the wait for sure. He has a long road ahead of him and I can’t say I envy his position but I hope he can bring some knowledge and direction to the US. And Brazil is excited as well. This morning when we went to the health post everyone was giving us thumbs up and asking why one earth we had stayed up till three in the morning when they KNEW he was going to win anyway. They already knew. Obviously. Why was everyone so worried when Brazil already knew?
Three and a half hours of sleep was SO worth it.
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