A Vote For Hope

This article is about a travelling program developed to talk about the importance of voting to Mauritanians, to decrease the number of spoiled votes, and encourage Mauritanians to learn about the platforms of their candidates. It is from World Vision Canada's Child View, The Magazine for Child Sponsors, Fall 2007, pages 13-15:

A VOTE FOR HOPE

A travelling road show traverses the Sahara in the Mauritania to make everyone's vote count

By Karen Homer

Khadijetou Mint Zeine arrives at the polling station at 7 a.m. to beat the scorching 45-degree heat in Nouakchott, the desert capital of Mauritania. She is among several hundred people crowded into a walled schoolyard patiently waiting to cast their ballots at makeshift voting booths set up inside.

Like many of the people at the polling station, Khadijetou, 20, has never voted. But this illiterate young woman is anxious to make her mark in the country's first-ever free and open elections.

Despite her electoral inexperience, Khadijetou knows just what to expect when she finally enters the polling station. Behind a curtain tacked to the school's crumbling concrete wall, she stamps the box beside the photo of her candidate from among 19 choices. She slips her paper into the ballot box -- a giant, sandproof plastic container. Finally, she dips her finger into a bottle of indelible ink and marks her voter card.

"I made my vote count," says Khadijetou, proudly pointing her purple-stained index finger skyward. "I'm happy I learned about how to vote from the Caravane de l'Espoir, or I might have stayed home today.

A few weeks before the election was held in the West African country this past March, Khadijetou and some friends joined 5,000 youth gathered eagerly in a local soccer field on a Saturday night to see the "theatre on wheels" that everyone has been talking about. They had come to see World Vision's Caravane de l'Espoir (Caravan of Hope) -- a 12-tonne truck with a flip-down side panel that converts the vehicle into a mobile stage. The Caravan's team of young actors and musicians used skits, songs and film to inform Mauritanians about the nation's electoral process.

When Commission Electorale Nationale Independante (CENI), Mauritania's elections commission, was charged with the daunting task of preparing Mauritanians to vote for the first time, it turned first to the Caravan team. For years the troupe has been raising awareness about HIV and AIDS through evenings of entertainment attracting thousands. CENI was confident the troupe could repeat the success of their HIV and AIDS tour by creating a completely new show that would bring home the message that everyone's vote counts.

Mauritania, a country of three million, presented some challenges. Many of the rural people had never even heard of democracy or what it means to vote. Since winning independence from France in 1960, all presidents in this former colony had come to power solely through military coups. With 48 per cent of Mauritanian adults unable to read or write, how would they learn to properly mark a ballot?

An analysis of the municipal elections held in 2006 revealed that many people had blindly voted along ethnic or religious lines without being aware of the issues. More resources would have to be directed into enhancing voter education if the national elections were to be truly fair and open.

CENI gave the World Vision Caravan team a three-point mandate for the election tour: reduce the incidence of spoiled ballots from 18 per cent to four per cent; inform Mauritanians about the importance of voting; and encourage them to learn about the candidates' platforms.

In January, the 27-member Caravan rolled out across the Sahara. Most of the audience heard the public dialogue about democracy for the first time. "They weren't sure how to respond," says Jon Shadid, a former World Vision employee who envisioned and designed the Caravan. "In Mauritania, as in many cultures, individualism is not valued. We talked about making your own decision about how to vote, and we openly told people not to sell their votes."

Selling one's vote to a candidate is tempting in a country where most people earn less than a dollar a day and parents routinely put their children to bed hungry, explains Shadid.

The Caravan team collaborated with other education groups working with CENI. Together they covered 80 villages and the capital, perofrming more than 200 shows. After a gruelling six-week tour covering 31,000 kilometres, the team trucked back to Nouakchott to await election day on March 11.

The result: more than 70 per cent of the electorate participated in the first round, and women and youth were well represented.Spoiled ballots were reduced to less than four per cent -- the acid test for the Caravan team. Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi, 68, a minister under the former autocratic president, won the presidential race with 52.8 per cent of the vote.

Esther Lehmann, director of World Vision in Mauritania, is confident that this historic step towards democracy will eventually mean a better future for children in Mauritania. UNICEF reports that 16,000 children in this country die each year before their fifth birthday, mostly from preventable diseases linked to poverty.

Lehmann says children who have been marginalized by poverty and injustice in Mauritania will have more access to power and decision-making -- something their parents never had. "In a few years, today's children will not only have questions, they'll bring solutions to the poverty facing this country."