The first elections were held four years before we were supposed to become independent. So the people could practise voting, I suppose. We were allowed to choose our own Prime Minister and some members of the cabinet, although the British would still tell them what to do. That way the Prime Minister could practise his new job without the burden of actually having to make any real decisions. They gave us the cow but kept hold of the tether.
The second time, though, it was for real. Janneh told me he had written a paper about the ways our constitution needed to be changed; it had been published in a newspaper. The motorbike belonged to the People’s Progress Party. Janneh travelled with a cardboard box of fliers and posters strapped to the pillion seat. The posters bore a picture of the PPP’s candidate, a man with a parting cut like a railway track into his hair and small, pursed lips. A week after I met Janneh, I stopped to look at one of the posters on a pillar box at the post office.
‘Mouth like a goat’s anus,’ said the man behind me to the albino boy shining his shoes. ‘Doesn’t stand a chance. Tell me why they even bother coming to stand here, eh?’
The albino was silent. He flexed the shoeshine cloth and pulled it back and forward across the toe of the man’s right foot. When he spoke his voice was high and light as the sound of a bamboo flute: ‘They say they have candidates all over the country. Every constituency. One people. One country.’
‘Parah!’ replied the first man. ‘Let them take this one back to where he came from. Give us our own sons first.’
The wind whipped our faces like a damp cloth, we flew through clouds of dust. At the sides of roads upon which no other vehicle travelled, we stopped to picnic. From high on an escarpment we watched a tornado spin across the plain below, watched people trying to outrun the gathering storm as it rumbled across the landscape, bearing down upon them like a snorting bull. Behind it the sky shone blue. And on the horizon a rainbow arced across the sky. On our way back down the dirt track crumbled and slid away under our wheels. In the next town we pasted the goat man’s image over the face of the candidate for the opposing party. We handed out fliers to passers-by. At the kiosk where we stopped and Janneh treated me to my first taste of popcorn the vendor took a flier from a stack on his counter, folded it into a funnel shape and poured popcorn into it. Then he sprinkled greyish salt all over the popcorn and the goat man’s crumpled features.
‘Doesn’t matter,’ said Janneh. ‘Actually, it’s a fine thing. Helps spread the word. More people than ever get to hear our name.’
I asked Janneh why people said his candidate, whose name was in fact Sulaiman Bio, would not win.
‘Says who?’ he asked, pushing his eyebrows together.
I told him about the man at the post office.
‘The decision is in the hands of the people. They know what they want. They know what is right for them. And they know their rights.’ It was something I had heard him say before. When Janneh spoke he always sounded impressive. And yet, it seemed to me, talking to him felt like chasing butterflies. The words were beautiful, but their meaning was sometimes hard to catch.
Another day Janneh asked me if I wanted to be a returning officer. I was so flattered I said yes straight away, with no idea what I was being asked to do.
My post was a rice-weighing station in a town I had never been to before. I was given a seat behind a desk upon which were heaped piles of voting papers and a long list of names. At my feet, a metal ballot box. Two more boxes, wooden this time, were placed at one end of the room next to each other. A thin curtain suspended on a wire hung between them. The officer in charge gave me the key to the metal box and said he would be back to collect it at the end of the day.
Polling started at seven-thirty sharp! I pushed at the door of the station, which was really a shed, and the sunlight streamed in, lighting up the rice dust suspended in the air. I picked up a pile of papers and stood there in readiness.
An hour later I went back to the desk and sat down on the chair. I straightened the papers, arranging them into two neat stacks. The list of names and the pen I placed in front of me. I strolled back to the door and looked out. Two men were coming down the lane. I turned and hurried back to the desk. I watched them as they strolled past the open door without turning once. I got up and stared down the road after them.
Outside the station posters fluttered faintly in the breeze. It had rained in the night. Damp patches of ground steamed gently in the sun. The leaves on the trees shone bright as jewels. Tiny black midges danced across the puddles. A man with a rolled umbrella appeared before me. I stepped aside.
‘Are you here to vote?’
‘How much for a bushel?’
I smiled. I explained who I was. I was the returning officer for the elections. The rice station would be operating again tomorrow. In the meantime he could come in and vote.
‘Now?’ he asked.
‘Today. The elections are being held today, to decide who should head the Government.’ I gestured with my hand towards the polling booths. The man hesitated and then stepped inside. I continued: ‘What’s your name? I have to mark it on the list to say you’ve voted.’
The man told me his name: ‘Abu.’
‘Abu?’
‘Yes.’
‘Abu what? What is your father’s name?’
‘Abu Kamara.’
I traced my finger down the list. There were a lot of Kamaras. Dozens, in fact. Oddly no Abu. I checked. ‘Abu, yes?’ Yes. ‘Do you have another name that you use? A middle name?’ He said he did not. Alfred Kamara. Alhaji Kamara. Maybe this man had been to Mecca. ‘Are you a Muslim?’
‘I am a Muslim.’
That seemed to me to be good enough. He had a vote, I just couldn’t find it. I did not want to disappoint him or lose my first client. I placed a tick next to the name Alhaji Kamara and handed him a voting form. I told him to go into the booth and select his candidate, and then to press his thumb into the purple ink pad to sign and again on to the bottom of the form, unless, that is, he knew how to write his name.
He had one question. ‘Who is it I am voting for?’
‘You vote for the candidate of your choice.’
‘What is his name?’
‘Your choice is your own. I can’t tell you that.’ The man stood and gazed at the paper in his hand. He moved neither forward nor back.
‘So who did you vote for?’ he asked. I hadn’t voted. I hadn’t thought about it.
‘Sulaiman Bio. The people’s choice.’ I cited the campaign literature. ‘People’s Progress Party.’
‘The people’s choice?’
I smiled, nodding. Said it again. The people’s choice. The choice of the people. That way round it sounded like a foregone conclusion. The man moved towards the booth. ‘Third one down,’ I added, to be helpful.
Minutes later he departed with a purple thumb and a purple stamp on the back of his hand to stop him from trying to vote again.
Later in the afternoon I kicked off my red shoes and rubbed the soles of my feet. From time to time I went to the door to try to encourage passers-by, such as there were, to come inside. Still no one came. I went back to the desk and gazed idly at the list of names. I felt like a hostess who had been snubbed by her guests.
I let my eyes run down the list. Name upon name.
Like ladder rungs.
Railway track sleepers.
Or a row of sleeping children.
Players waiting to be picked for a team.
First I stole Jeneba Turay’s vote. I took it as my own. I reckoned by now she wasn’t coming, whoever she was. Since I hadn’t voted anywhere else I didn’t see how it could possibly matter. I pressed my right thumb into the ink pad and then on to the bottom left of the voting slip.