Well it’s almost 11 am and I still haven’t been able to leave for work yet. Why? Well it’s been pouring down rain all morning, and since I take a boda boda (motorbike taxi) to work, I can’t leave until it stops raining.
Don’t you wish America operated like this? :)
Well since I’m stranded because of the rain, I think it’s the perfect opportunity to go ahead and take the time to polish a blog post I’ve been working on for awhile. I think it’s a pretty well-known fact that different cultures measure time differently. In the West, it’s “If you’re early, you’re on time; if you’re on time, you’re late; if you’re late, you’re replaced.” On “African time,” however, things happen when they happen. Time is centered around the event, not necessarily the numbers on the clock.
But a big contributing factor to “African time” is just that everything is so interconnected here. There are so many variables to everything, and it’s all interdependent.
When we were in Zanzibar, we had gone to the little fishing village that was just off the beach from our hotel to get chips-my-eye (no idea why it’s called that), a tasty snack of an omelet with French fries in it. We were directed to a place that makes them, but they told us they didn’t have any that day. The reason? Someone in the village had died, so the guy who normally brings the fries had been involved in the funeral arrangements for the person who had died.
Another morning at the hotel in Zanzibar, we were awaiting milk to come for our tea and coffee. They couldn’t get it to us yet because the guy who keeps the key to the milk fridge hadn’t arrived yet.
A few weeks ago, I went to the store to get paint, but I was unsuccessful in my trip. Why? The store (a very big, Western shopping center) didn’t have power. It was running on a generator, but the generator wasn’t powerful enough to support the paint mixer.
My friends Tony and Lizzy invited me to Tony’s uncle’s house for lunch on Uganda’s Independence Day, October 9th. Tony had told me to meet them at 10, which had me a little confused, really. Honestly, any time I’ve been invited for lunch at a Ugandan’s, we end up eating around dinner time. Food takes a long time to prepare here, so that’s just the way it is. I’m not complaining or anything. Really if anything, I appreciate the hard work that goes into preparing food here. It just means that we’re not going to eat at an American’s idea of “lunch time,” so by now if I’m ever invited for lunch, I expect to eat at 4 or 5 at the earliest.
So when Tony told me 10 am, I was skeptical. I started calculating how late I should be in African time, but the rain actually made that decision for me. Right when I was thinking of leaving my house, it started pouring down rain, and didn’t stop for hours. So I was stuck at home.
Finally the rain stopped around 1 or so, and I got in touch with Lizzy and Tony. They told me that they were just heading off to get the chicken, so I could meet them any time.
Haha, so I finally left the house another hour or so later, giving them enough time to go get the chicken and to meet them at his uncle’s house. I was actually surprised that when we got there, there was rice and beans prepared, so we ate that as a late lunch, then enjoyed each other’s company as the chicken was cooked, then we ate that for dinner.
I showed up to teach the kids at DP one morning last week, but we couldn’t get in the building because the person who had the key hadn’t come yet. Normally someone else keeps the key, but the staff was away at a planning retreat all week, so someone else had taken the key, and he didn’t show up until later.
That’s just life here. Everything is interconnected. Everything relies on something else, and if there’s a missing link, it’s like a domino effect. Sometimes you can’t get paint because the power is out. Sometimes you have to wait until the rain stops before you can go get the chicken from the market to cook it for lunch. Sometimes there’s a variable with the DP van driver who is unable to pick up the employees who have the key to where you need to be. It’s aaaallll dominoes, and that’s just how it is here! You’ve just gotta go with the flow!
