The blue stain

We just went on a 10-minute walk to explore our neighborhood on Election Day. The roads are empty – only authorized vehicles are allowed – UN, Election Monitoring, ambulances etc… The only noise this morning was the gathering of our neighbor’s family as they all went together to vote and the cries of a variety of animals in the zoo, which are usually muffled by car horns. At the local poling posts, foreign faces with large badges are surveying. After voting, people have a blue mark on their right thumb indicating that they fulfilled their civic duty. There have been some scattered reports of problems in Western Nepal. Maoist groups took control today of some poling stations in the hopes of filtering the voters. Yesterday, one major candidate from Surkhet was assassinated, postponing the elections there for one week. National results will be streaming in for more than a week for sure – making for interesting events to come.