Disenfranchised youth

In the little mountain village where I observed the elections, by 3pm most people who wanted to vote had already done so. By law the polling stations had to stay open until 5pm, but the queues had dwindled to naught, and there was no one left outside. No one except these kids, who half-jokingly, half-seriously insisted that they too wanted to vote. The youngest one could barely talk, but when I asked in very broken Swahili who he wanted to vote for (“President, wapi?”), he answered loud and clear, “Kabila!” Then it turned out that the oldest ‘kid’ in the group, whom I estimated to be no more 15 years old at a push, was in fact 22, had a voter’s card, but hadn’t yet built up the nerve to vote. So to my gentle encouragement and his small friends’ boisterous teasing and cheering, he shyly fulfilled his civic duty, shuffling into the polling station timid and embarrassed, and coming out again some 10 minutes later with just the widest grin in the universe. Welcome to democracy.