Sunu - Our

I don’t cry.

I’ve lived an incredibly gifted life during which I’ve avoided many of the worst situations that would bring me to tears but at a little before five in the morning on November 5th, 2008, sitting on a broken cot in the Peace Corps house in Kolda, Senegal, I finally cried. No one in the room seemed to notice as everyone was watching Obama speak to millions on the laptop which we had streaming CNN.com live.

It felt odd. Especially since I wasn’t sad.

While I know crying on this past election night was an experience shared by many, people did so for different reasons. I thought of Gladys, Randy’s grandmother who passed away earlier this year at the age of 102. An African-American woman who grew up in Harlem and lived through so many different periods of American history. It’s too bad she couldn’t live to see it through to Obama’s election.

I thought of when we found out Bush was reelected in biology class and Kirini, Nicolette and Libby immediately walked out of the classroom in tears.

This time it was different.

I was honestly proud to be an American. I no longer felt like I had to admit to being American. It felt like we, as a people, had accomplished something—a victory recognized and celebrated by the world. Besides a few periods of the Clinton administration, during my politically-conscious lifetime, I’ve felt that America has done significantly more bad than good. As a result, and particularly as of late, we’ve paid for it with our reputation, something felt particularly hard when abroad.

In Senegal, ever since I’ve arrived here the one positive thing people have without fail said about Americans is “Obama!”, usually accompanied by a thumbs up. It’s pretty safe to say that Obama would have gotten Senegal’s vote. On the day before leaving for my rural visits, while in downtown Dakar, a parade of car rapides, trucks, cars and buses drove by with pictures of and signs for Obama, people cheering and drums playing. While in Salamata, a village of only a few hundred outside of Kolda without access to television, the internet or newspapers, they referred to him as “Notre président” (Our President), cheering that the Maison Blanche (White House) had now become the Maison Noire (Black House).

With the election of President Obama, it really does give me some hope for the US. I may be naïve in thinking that not all politicians are the same and that Obama will do something different than what we’ve had in the past, but I’m excited by the premise of a future with the rest of the world behind us.