African Time?

We are now in week 6 of the 8 week pre-service training (PST). Our group (36) will be sworn in on September 20th. We are all looking forward to this day, and are preparing speeches in our various training languages: Afrikaans, Oshiherero, Oshikwanyama, etc. Training has consisted of more technical training sessions (education, teaching techniques, understanding the Namibian education system), intensive language training, medical training, and more. I am looking forward to beginning work at my site, and to engaging with the students, teachers, and the community there. We are meant to observe initially, and then take on our own classrooms as of January, when the Namibian school-year begins. I feel fortunate to already know some amazing and committed colleagues at my site, and am eager to begin working with them. Our training has not been easy. The catch with Peace Corps is that you are removed from all that is comfortable and known. You cannot rely on your usual routines and vices to get you by. You have to learn to navigate various cultural differences. For example, those of us from the “western” world largely view time differently than many Africans. A friend of mine here at PST gave me the following quote, which helps to illustrate the difference in the way time is viewed. It is from The Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuscinski.

“The European and the African have an entirely different concept of time. In the European worldview, time exists outside man, exists objectively, and has measurable and linear characteristics. According to Newton, time is absolute: “Absolute, true mathematical time exists of itself and forms its own nature, it flows equably and without relation to anything external.” The European feels himself to be time’s slave, dependent on it, subject to it. To exist and function, he must observe its ironclad, inviolate laws, its inflexible principles and rules. He must heed deadlines, dates, days and hours. He moves within the rigors of time and cannot exist outside them. They impose upon him their requirements and quotes. An unresolvable conflict exists between man and time, one that always ends with man’s defeat – time annihilates him. Africans apprehend time differently. For them, it is a much looser concept, more open, elastic, subjective. It is man who influences time, its shape, course and rhythm (man acting, of course, with the consent of gods and ancestors). Time is even something that man can create outright, for time is made manifest through events, and whether an event takes place or not depends, after all, on man alone. If two armies do not engage in a battle, then that battle will not occur (in other words, time will not have revealed its presence, will not have come into being). Time appears as a result of our actions, and vanishes when we neglect or ignore it. It is something that springs to life under our influence, but falls into a state of hibernation, even nonexistence, if we do not direct our energy toward it. It is a subservient, passive essence, and most importantly, one dependent on man. The absolute opposite of time as it is understood in the European worldview. In practical terms, this means that if you go to a village where a meeting is scheduled for the afternoon but find no one at the appointment spot, asking “When will the meeting take place?” makes no sense. You know the answer; “It will take place when people come.”

So indeed, one must find a new way to navigate time and place. What I have observed in Namibia is that society operates at a high level of intuition: people seem to collectively “sense” when is the right time to come to a gathering. For an outsider such as me, this is hard to grasp, harder still to participate in. Yet both sides must try, for that is the bridge that is to be built through Peace Corps. We are all trying hard to understand each other, keeping faith that in the end we are richer for it.

“I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart.” – Vincent van Gogh