Woke up at 04:45 and started to get ready. By 05:45 I was out the door and headed for the polling station, took a shortcut (big mistake) and noticed that the queue extended almost all the way back to my front gate. I'd just done a whole lap around the neighbourhood!
By the time I got to the back of the queue it was 06:00. Ended up queueing until 09:30 when an AP and IEBC official started telling those whose names began with P, Q and R to go straight to the polling station. Thinking I was saved from another 4 hour wait, I proceeded to the front of the queue where another AP told me and other PQRs that they don't know why we came here as those streams are full. He put us in a separate queue where we waited for 2 hours. An IEBC official came by and asked what queue we were in and we responded PQR, we were then informed that there was already another line for PQR and we were in the wrong place, he checked IDs and lines were merged and we slowly began moving.
After 3 more hours I got to the front of the line only to look up and see that I was in the wrong stream, the idiot official did not understand the alphabet. I ended up queueing for another 2 hours in the correct stream.
10 hours in the hot sun and I wasn't even the worst off!
IEBC needs to hire more competent staff and communicate better with police. In fact police should not be involved in anything other than maintaining order in my opinion. Also,
never listen to the officials, look for the stream yourself.In a place where thought is abandoned, freedom can become a curse.