On Friday (election shenanigans permitting) Becky's travelling to the far south of Nigeria for a wedding. We're all going to a wedding in Jos on Easter Monday but there's no way I'd spend four hours at the hairdresser's like she did although the result was amazing.
This is the scene from the bottom of our garden on Saturday as people waited to cast their votes. From 7am there was a constant hubbub and crowd of would-be voters - very different from the half empty, near silence of British polling stations I've experienced.
All seemed to go well here, although Becky told me many people in her area hadn't received their voting cards, thus being disenfranchised. Today it's like the calm before the storm. The roads are empty, many shops are closed as we all wait for the results to be announced late this afternoon or tomorrow. There are many IDPs (Internally Displaced People) around Jos, Christian and Muslim, all of them going through grief and trauma, many of them young men in the angry and feeling powerless stage. The real verdict on how these elections have gone will be reached according to the reactions when the results are known.
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