Greetings from Cote d’Ivoire, land of 2 presidents. So I guess since I last wrote, the results were overturned and Gbagbo the incumbent was declared the winner…by the constitutional counsel which he controls and after cancelling the votes from 7 out of 19 departments due to ‘fraud’. Such a crazy coincidence that those were the departments where the opposition got over 80 percent of the votes during the first election. So that was Friday and then yesterday he was sworn in. Shotgun wedding-esque. The swearing in ceremony was actually pretty funny because it was totally disorganized. Then he gave some ridiculous speech about following the law and about how no international organization can declare the winner. I guess Outtara had a swearing-in ceremony at around the same time, but I haven’t seen it since the only channel we get is the state-run one.

The girls who are still here just say ‘I don’t care who it is as long as there is peace’ or ‘I just want a president’. They are in luck because now there are 2! So that’s how some people feel. Then yesterday I got to hear what my buddy Willfred had to say. Willfred has some sort of bad family situation and so he always comes to talk to sister Yvette who he told me is his best friend. Anyway he said that the French news channel lied when they said Outtara won and that they didn’t even mention the violence in the north and blah blah blah. It was interesting because when we watch the Ivorian channel I always think ‘who in the world would believe this’ but I guess there are people who believe it and who think the French lied and just want to control cote d’ivoire. I asked Willfred what he thought about the fact that the rest of the world thinks Outtara won, but at that point the sisters told him to go home. They tolerate him in small doses and then pretty much chase him away.

I’m not sure whats on the news there, but Im guessing only the most dramatic pictures are  being shown.

Tires burning in Abijdan and people breaking stuff.  Here in Duekoue its calm and there’s even school

tomorrow! Actually I doubt that, but here things are peaceful and no one is burning tires or breaking stuff. So

we’ll see who will be the president tomorrow. First it was Outtara, then Gbagbo, and now both! Who

knows what will happen but I need to fly out of here on the 18^th so I hope they take that into consideration.

Thanks for reading!