I Love You Time

Aria, one of the project facilitators who was here in Meheba this summer, mentioned to me once that one of the biggest reasons people didn't show up on time to her workshops was that they did not have watches, clocks, or any other way to tell time. So they would just have to guess when to leave for the workshop. Some would show up a half an hour early, some on time, and some a half an hour late. If you think about it, being just a half an hour off without any time telling device is pretty good.

 

I put myself through a little thought experiment. If I had no way to tell time, how would I have any idea when I should leave for a workshops that started at two o'clock in the afternoon? I guess I might leave after lunch. But when does lunch happen? When I get hungry, I suppose. Most people here have daily routines, so I suppose that on most days lunch - and pretty much everything else - happens at about the same time. So if they ever figure out what time they tend to finish lunch, they then can judge off of that.

 

While I continue to be impressed that people without watches can manage to only be fifteen minutes late, fifteen minutes late is still just no good when you are running a class that is only two hours and you have planned on using every minute of that two hours. The first week of PACE workshops I tried to pay close attention to when people were arriving. It was much as Aria had described. Everyone trickled sometime between twenty minutes before two o'clock and twenty minutes after. The people who came closest to being right on time were the people who had watches.

 

So last week when I went to Solwezi, the nearest big town where people can buy items that are imported cheaply, I bought watches for all the participants. I got them at about seventy five cents a piece after bargaining with several different salesmen in the market. They are your typical black, plastic sports watches except that they all flash "I love you" on the screen every couple seconds. You have to love them back.

 

As soon as I gave them out on Tuesday, everyone was asking me what time I had in order to get the correct time on their watches. One of the things I love about here is how time often seems to be such a lax thing; being late is the norm rather than the exception. Yet, when people do have watches, they synch them with the time on the radio religiously. If they meet someone else with a watch, they often compare times to see if they are the same. If someone asks you what time it is and it is 7:27, "It's about 7:30," is NOT an acceptable answer. You must tell the person the exact time.

 

I've only had two classes since I gave the watches to the participants, but only two people have been late since then. One was a man who came in, looked at his watch, and noted that it was two minutes past the hour. The second was a Zambian woman today who had gone to Solwezi to vote in the national elections. Everyone else came within the ten minutes before class. Starting class on time is a wonderful thing. It was definitely worth the seventy-five cents per person.