Better Late Than Never

I was warned about African time.  It is the concept that events, meetings, the school year, and people will just show up whenever… Even when you have made plans. 

Now I got a brief taste of this back in the States when my wonderful neighbor introduced me to her Ugandan co-worker.  We had planned to have lunch and the schedule was to pick me up at 1:00p.  He finally arrived at 2:30p.  I figured this was a test to see if I was prepared for what Uganda was going to bring. 

Well today must have been the final exam. 

So I am putting the final touches on my new home and needed the carpenter to come over to make my table smaller and secure my bookshelf to the wall.  Two very simple tasks.  We discussed the previous day that he would arrive at 8:00a sharp.  American time. 

I woke up, washed my face, brushed my teeth, got dressed and waited… I decided that calling at 8:15a would be the American thing to do but this is Africa.  So I waited some more.  I started calling at 10:00a and continued up until noon.  Not one phone call went through.  My landlord was around so I asked him if he knew where the carpenter was and the typical response of, “He’s coming” was given to me.  Finally at 1:30p he showed up.  That’s five and a half hours late; three hundred and thirty minutes to ponder; nineteen thousand eight hundred seconds to twiddle my thumbs.  I watched six episodes of Friends, swept, cleaned, painted, watched the paint dry, and thought about this post.

This is just one of the many cross-cultural differences between America and Uganda.   My parents drilled it into me that, “Early is on time, on time is late, and late is never acceptable.”  Needless to say, I am fearful to return to America to meetings that actually follow a schedule and to people that actually show up on time for events. 

I have thought about bringing African time back home but I think this is one area my parents would absolutely not support.

I don’t blame them. 

Until then, I will simply take in Africa.