African Time Be Dammed

Many years back (when I was a boy), a group of friends sat around the dinner table discussing future careers as we prepared for our final exam paper in high school. We then figured that instead of waiting for years going through college then looking for work, we could start making some money immediately by registering a company and starting some business. We named the company M-10, because we were 10 kids from Maseno School. All this over dinner, and before dinner was over, we agreed on a date, place and time to meet once done with school and back in the city. This was interesting because those many years back, we had no mobile phones and none had heard the term email. Some of us had fixed land line phones in our homes but we would generally be incommunicado for the next few weeks until the rendezvous date. Surprisingly, all 10 of us made it to the rendezvous (we eventually registered the company and made some money till college tore us apart).

But why do I write about this incident? Because today I find it incredulous that years ago we honored such meetings so faithfully without the use of the sophisticated gadgets that we now have but today we cannot keep simple appointments. A meeting scheduled for noon will start two hours late after a series of text messages indicating people are held up somewhere, something urgent came up etc. notwithstanding that some arrived on time for the said meeting. I am not even talking about school boy rendezvous here, I am talking about professionals attending official functions, husbands meeting their wives for lunch etc. The infuriating part is that we have so internalized this that we casually refer to it as African Time, without batting an eyelid.


Recently during an event that my organization had organized, I called one of the high profile speakers to find out where he was because we were ready to kick off(actually were about 15 minutes late). He casually replied that he was about 1 hour away and did not think he would make it in time for the event. And this is from someone who has made a career pointing out the inefficiency of our governments.

If I remember correctly, there is a quote by Shakespeare that goes something like "I wasted time, and now time doth waste me..." Enough of the rant.



Keep time