Wednesday the 18th of May 2011 was of course South Africa’s local municipal elections. And if you are a proud (or not so proud) citizen of this country, then it would have been your duty to make the effort of trudging down to your local voting station and casting your vote on the two (or in some cases three, but never one) colourful ballot papers they would have handed you.
Of course, you could also have decided that this whole democracy thing is a bit ‘meh’ and continued on with your emigration papers process and just enjoyed the day off.
As for Chantelle and myself, we chose the former option (even though Chantelle was working a late shift) and thus after a casual morning of getting Jessica ready for the trip, we hopped into the car and made the short trip down to our elected voting station, Gordon’s Bay Primary School – which I had confirmed via the IEC website the day before.
Although I heard from a lot of friends and colleagues later that they pretty much had no queue to deal with, and simply marched on through, voted and then headed off to the pub, we did have a small queue to contend with, and with Jessie happily snoozing away in her carry seat, we patiently stood in line for just over half an hour, before being ushered into the hall to make our marks.
The process ran extremely smoothly, the voting station was well staffed, the lady with the indelible ink pen was thankfully quite reserved in her application of the thumb mark, and all in all it was another well organised voting experience for me to enjoy.
In other words, good job and a hearty pat on the back to all those involved.
As for the rest of the day, we made a pit stop at Pick ‘n Pay to pick up the necessary goodies, and on returning home I proceeded to braai some delicious morsels to last us for both lunch and supper, while Chantelle played around a bit in the garden before heading out on her shift.
Oh, but she did bake a beautiful box cake on her eventual return.
And as far as Jessie was concerned, this was just another day of eat, sleep, poop and bath – and of course have her servants continuously rudely wake her in order to remove her puffy white (and usually stinky) undergarment!
[ Have I mentioned yet that she is now past the six month old mark? Time really flies when you’re having fun (more or less)! ]
