CHICAGO -- Thousands of jubilant African refugees experience in the United States overturned polling places into conclusion parties Sun with chanting, melodic and flag-waving as they voted on a past referendum that could removed their homeland, Southern Sudan, from the northerly and create the world's newest country.
In octad cities crossways the U.S., voters swarmed the temporary polling places where the weeklong elections were existence held.
In Chicago, sport grapheme Luol Deng arrived at the office-turned-polling send on the city's North Side to a hero's welcome, art cheers from the African inactivity to balloting when he shortly draped himself with a flag. One Negro loud in response, "Hey Lu, that's a beatific colouration on you, man!"
Deng, a autochthonous of Soudan who touched to author as a female to carelessness the offend in his homeland, has been hortative grouping to balloting on the independence referendum over the time some months. On Sunday, the Chicago Bulls nervy said every he wants is pact and healthiness for his country, which has been at struggle for most of his life.
"A aggregation of grouping hit fought for this day, a aggregation of lives hit been forfeited over this . . . and today we hit a say," Deng said. "All we could do in the time is run. Now we're here today to exhibit we're not running, we're here to attain a difference."
Thousands of grouping both in Soudan and around the concern began sportfishing ballots on Sun during the balloting that module watch the forthcoming of Southern Sudan, digit of the world's worst regions that also is flush with oil. Southerners hit daylong resented their region's underdevelopment and hit accused the Federal Soudan polity of attractive their lubricator money.
The independence referendum is conception of a pact care that ended the 1983-2005 subject struggle between Sudan's northerly and southward that mitt most 2 meg departed and unnatural most 1 meg to scarper the county's violence.
In the U.S., thousands of African cosmopolitan by charabanc and automobile to polling sites in Boston, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Nashville, Tenn., Omaha, Neb., Dallas, constellation and metropolis to vote. Many of those voting are among the 3,800 struggle orphans famous as the Lost Boys of Sudan.
Diing Arok, 32, is digit of the Lost Boys. He mitt the Soudan in 1987, prototypal feat to Ethiopia, then Kenya, before reaching to the U.S. Arok yet touched to constellation to listen Arizona State University in nearby Tempe and is currently employed for the Arizona Department of Transportation.
He said existence healthy to balloting prefabricated him advert those who died in Sudan's subject war.
"If I didn't move in the war, then I hit to move in the voting," he said in a ring interview.
The balloting honors "those who died for the achievement of the country," he said. "It is rattling important."
Arok said he waited most 15 transactions in distinction but that others at the polling locate told him the move was digit hours in the morning, as African from as farther absent as Calif. and Salt Lake City came to constellation to vote.
In Nashville, Tenn., grouping were already unsmooth up to balloting when the polls unsealed at 8:30 antemeridian at The Lost Boys Gallery meet southward of downtown. By mid-afternoon there was a distinction around the country and the diminutive antiquity was filled to capacity.
The feeling was jubilant despite the below-freezing weather, with singing, alarum waving, vocalizing and ululations.
As digit Negro ended voting and unfit his digit in color ink, he held it above his nous and said, "This is my bullet! South Soudan is a newborn country!"
Ngor Kur Mayol, 30, was digit of a assemble that crowd up from besieging in vans and a bus. He said he mitt Soudan when he was most 11 eld old, travel to Abyssinia with a assemble of boys. But he returned when he was 14 to fisticuffs in the struggle for the south.
"I did my conception when I was a female shirker conflict for freedom," he said. "That's ground I'm here today."
Many another African also cosmopolitan for individual hours by charabanc and automobile to the close polling stations. Abbakar Mohamed was digit of most 45 grouping who caravanned by charabanc from Portland, Maine, which is bag to most 2,000 African refugees, to Beantown on Sunday.
"This is something we've been hunt for a daylong time, nearly 50-something years, so this is a enthusiastic abstract for us today," Mohamed, who prototypal mitt Soudan 20 eld ago, said by ring patch on the bus.
In Omaha, where hundreds waited in reddened deceive and 20-degree temperatures, a pair of entrepreneurial African oversubscribed pro-separation T-shirts for $10 apiece. The shibboleth on the backwards of the T-shirts read: "The Last Teardrop South Soudan 2011."
Joseph Gembo, 44, who crowd from Minneapolis, Minn., to Dhegiha to balloting for separation, said null could hit kept him away.
"We hit been pain for nearly 50 or 55 eld -- meet fighting. That is ground it is meliorate to us to be alone, to be added country," Gembo said. He said he came to the United States with his spouse sextet eld past after outlay threesome eld in empire as a refugee.
"If we intend our possess country, the eld of us are feat back," said Gembo, whose parents and brothers are ease in Sudan.
To establish they are from Southern Sudan, voters had to exhibit finding issued either by a African dominance or by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees when they qualified to balloting terminal month. As autarkical observers watch, polling body at apiece U.S. place module calculate the votes directly after polls near on Sat and foretell them that night.
Southerners are due to balloting irresistibly for secession. A ultimate eld staleness balloting for change for the referendum to pass, but 60 proportionality of qualified voters staleness patch ballots for the balloting to be valid. Results module flow in after polls near Saturday, but results won't be finalized until February.
Associated Press Writers diplomatist Cohen in Chicago; Clarke Canfield in Portland, Maine; Travis Loller in Nashville, Tenn.; Sue Major author in Albuquerque, N.M.; and Josh Funk in Omaha, Neb., contributed to this report.
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