"AFRICAN TIME"

Sometimes it really gets to me when people can not keep their word. I am told it’s an Africa thing; when one says I am coming to see you in 2 hours, it means he only has the intentions but which does not infer a commitment. There is even what they call “African Time”. An event is scheduled for 16.00 hrs but participants start converging at 16.30 hrs, the latter being the African Time.


Today’s world is fast-paced and 24-hour days are cramped up with schedules unending. We ride fast cars, eat fast foods and write in abbreviations. Unlike the Stone Age when the approach to satisfy the need for food, water and security were simplistic, satiety in the post-modern era is multidimensional. Is it at the massage parlour, the stocks section of the dailies or work-place performance appraisal? The list is varied, ever-increasing and added to the Early Man’s primitive priorities. Hence the drag for what to do is no longer exists. Time has become our most precious treasure.

While it is impossible to keep a timely pace with every thing, it is the deliberateness of being non-prompt as well as the (nonchalant) cheer it is greeted with that I find unnerving. Promptness ought to be natural. It speaks of character, respect for others and a sense of responsibility. Employment may not an appropriate word for the Early Man but the world has evolved since his existence. In the same way, “African Timing” (well, it is not only an African thing) ought to have gone through its own evolution.

As people make efforts not to laze with appointments and schedules, people will increasingly drift towards orderliness and the beauty it paints for our species. We must make the efforts.