At noon on Friday a group of 10 observers and our driver headed out to Illobosco to prepare for the election on Sunday. When we arrived we checked into the Hotel Illobosco. Warren and I had less than positive memories of staying in the same hotel 3 years ago when we observed elections in Sensutepeche. On that trip we felt that the room was dirty, buggy, and the bathroom "down the hall" had no toilet seat and walls that only went up about 5 feet and then became wire fencing. I was dreading 3 nights in the same conditions....but when we checked in we were put in the "honeymoon suite"! It was a nice, fairly clean space with it's own bathroom... with a toilet seat! It turns out that most of the rooms in the hotel have their own bathrooms...we just had gotten the worst rooms in the hotel the last visit.
There was a nice, airy space on the top of the hotel where our group could meet and where we had breakfast two mornings. Our group of 10 represented 7 countries....Canada, US, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, and El Salvador. It was a great group to work with and we thoroughly enjoyed our time together. We spent the rest of Friday and all of Saturday meeting with election officials, inspecting the place where the ballots were kept...and checking the locks...,and visiting with political candidates and NGOs.
One of the candidates invited us into her home and not only discussed issues but showed us around the property.
We visited an NGO that worked with young people trying to get out of the gangs and another environmental group that was very involved with the anti-mining movement in the area.
We tried to get to bed early on Saturday to prepare for election day on Sunday. We needed to leave the hotel at 4:45 A.M. and the fear was that the complicated ballot count might keep us at the voting centers until sometime Monday morning.
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