Whoever came up with this African time stuff and made it a thing. I don’t know where or how am African time was invented but from what I know about it, it’s like Africans are known for not keeping to time obviously so when someone wants to make reference to time not being kept, they say they would attend to that thing in African time.
So African time is generally a cliche that’s use to describe the idea of not coming to a meeting at the right time or a meeting nor starting at the right time.
The thing is that African time has been a part of so many people’s life and have done a lot to people on the negative. I was talking to my friend the other day and we were supposed to go to a meeting by 10am. I asked her do they keep to time or it is African time? She said they keep to time.
The other day we were to go to another meeting and while we were rushing that we were behind time, only for us to get there and notice that the meeting that was to start by 10am was yet to start. We had to wait till 11am for the meeting to start. African time.
African time has caused a lot of people some serious issues. Some have missed their flights, bus, train, etc just because of this so called African time saga. Alot of people have missed interviews and have gotten themselves into trouble because of African time.
Well in my own opinion, the issue of not keeping to time is a general disease that need to be treated. I myself have had my own fair share of troubles due to not keeping to time or assuming that meetings would always start with African time.
My experience today of African time Wahala made me feel very sad. I had this burial of a church member that lost the dad to attend today with some persons. The time on the flier was written 10am. Well in my little experience, burials always take time before the whole process of going to the mortuary and come home and back and forth all all the drama that happems, the corpse actually gets to finally be buried towards afternoon.
So I was like I am going to have to start going by 1pm so that by two I would be there. Probably stay till four and then start coming back. I was on my phone all morning and when it was finally time for me to start going, I started calling the people involved with me only to find out that the burial has finished.
Infact it finished hours before the time I planned to go. I didn’t know that this burial was not the regular type of burial that I had always known. This one was to happen in a cemetery. I hadn’t been to one before. They said they would come from the mortuary to the cemetery, do the burial and everyone goes home.
There no celebration or gathering or anything of sort. The burial lasted for one an hour and thirty minutes. While I was in my house planning to bath and get ready to start going to the burial, it had finished like an hour and thirty minutes earlier.
Kai, I really felt bad today. I felt I had failed in my duty of supporting someone who needed the consoling when needed. That’s the danger of African time. African time is not a good practice at all. It dawned on me today. We should really learn to practice punctuality at all times.
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