Back at it!

Finally back doing what I love doing!

A day of work and two days of rest to finally get back again at it. My day started on October 30 at 2:00 in the morning although I slept only 3 or so hours since I slept at more or less 10 in the evening. I need to get ready as I have volunteered and applied to serve in the BSK Elections, an event where we select our leaders in our small community around the country. This event also indicates the democracy we have as a democratic country on which people has the power to elect who to put in the leadership position through majority voting.

As this is my first time serving, this might be overwhelming and I may conduct mistakes but thankfully, I've got companions who has already some first-hand experience in serving in the election. After preparing all things, such as extra clothes, pens, rags, other necessities, I am already walking to the street and find some vehicles to ride on to the meet up place, City Hall. The streets might be empty as compared to day time, but there are vehicles with sirens going loud and clear with escorts which means that the election day has officially started for us.

As I have recalled some Barangays' call time to go to the city hall was 12 Midnight and ours at 4 in the morning. At three, I already am at the streets but it took me at least 30 minutes to one hour to find a vehicle to ride on. It was a patient game for us servers, and at four, I already have met up with my companions in our precinct. If only the system is so much organized and planned, we as electoral board would have been not so much stressed about everything. Unfortunately, it is not, which is why it took as 3 hours to finally go to our precinct, in our assigned classroom where actual voting will happen for every voters.

Just imagine waiting, with no breakfast, too many people, no fan or air conditioner, damn it was like a stampede in their. Each electoral member, protecting their own ballot box. People already shouting, some already at the point of collapsing and man I tell you, most of these people serving in the election are Teachers in the country. Some are just volunteers from private and other public agencies.

Anyways, we at least got on time for the election. Really on time, as it should be 7 in the morning, where the official voting should start in every precinct, and yeah we arrived more or less at 7 in the morning. 😆

As soon as we got in the classroom, we directly got into preparing the things needed such as the list for those people who will vote in our precinct, the secrecy folder with the names of the candidates, thumbmarks, the signatures, and other things needed to do. By the way, we haven't had our breakfast yet. So within 30 minutes, we are actually done preparing and instead of eating, we directly started the voting.

We are looking time to eat some foods not to starve and collapse. Until 3 in the afternoon, we finally closed the precinct and not accept voters anymore. We finally got time to eat some food and prepare for the next round and such. Once done, we proceeded to the next part which is the manual counting of votes.

It took us 5 hours or so to finally finish counting the whole thing. My legs, my feet are already shaking, my eyes already halfway falling off. Damn it, I was thinking to myself, why did I join this? HHAHAHAHA. Anyways, we proceeded into closing of the whole thing, seal the results, put our signature and others needed to be done. I took us 3 hours to finish this and we finally got to submit our reports first to the Barangay Canvassers, then go back to the City Hall and submit our reports. We actually got there on October 31 at 3 in the morning, with no sleep yet. What's more is that there are already a lot of people in line and some even fighting off because of other people inserted.

Anyways, I am already too tired to mind off other people so just followed the line I was in. It took us 2 hours to finally submit our election returns and other documents. FINALLY!

But when I called Jane's situation (@mjblancia0818), as she also served in the election, their team wasn't in a good position as they were confused on what to do with the papers and envelopes to be submitted. So instead of directly going home, I went to Jane's team and helped them with what to do.

After doing so, I finally went home and sleep. No breakfast, just water, I am really too sleepy. Actually awake more than 24 hours, when I woke up it's already lunch time, and I contacted Jane and they are still in the City Hall near the submission lane. So I hurried back to meet her and we had our lunch together. Gone back home after, and sleep through the whole afternoon, wake up at 5 PM for an hour or so to once again go back to sleep.

The other day, we also sleep the whole day. No strength to do other things. But now I am happy to be back doing what I needed to do. We've also got some honoriarium for serving in the election, and I plan to use it to complete a goal for the guild's foundation.

An experience that I will never forget. Thank you for reading! 😊