THE PREVALENCE OF AFRICAN TIME MENTALITY!!!

Hey Guys!!

I guess we’ve all noticed a problem that has plagued Africans for many years and has been a cause for concern. Have you ever organized an event and you invite people then they show up when everyone else is living? Well your certainly not the first and probably won’t be the last. This is a typical African trade mark called African timing.

It is now a common tradition that if you organize a social event and you invite people (Africans especially), they show up 3 hours after the start time of the event asking questions like “why are you living so early, Is the food still remaining” then they head straight down to the food section expecting to see a large portion of food and drinks waiting attractively for them, feeling bad when there’s none and eventually showcasing their nice outfits to the few people left so that it doesn’t totally go to waste. Do I hear a guilty chuckle? Are you one of those that fall into the 97% of this category? Truth is, we are all guilty of it in some way, I for one have been a true Nigerian in this sense. But the question is this: What is it about time that we Africans don’t get?

I was to attend a birthday party at 5pm last two weeks with my friend Tammy who lives about 15 minutes away from me and was mobile. With the normal African mentality that “everyone will be late for a naija event”, I was ready at about 5.45 thinking I would have been out of mine at about 6.00-6.15 ish to arrive at 6.30 or 6.45. I then called my friend to let her know I was ready. I asked her where she was and she told me she had just left her house..Yh!! we all know what it means when they say “I just left my house".

 I estimated her time of arrival to be 6.00 or 6.10 max since she was just 15 minutes away from me. At 6.05 I called her and she said “am on my way”, I presumed she was close to mine since she left at about 5.45 (deducting 5-7 minutes for traffic or any other possible obstacles). At 6.15 I called her again, this time, I asked, where exactly are you!!. Then she said “you’ll see me soon” mahn are you a ghost that I haven’t seen you yet!!. That was how miss “you’ll see me soon” eventually showed up at mine at 7.05pm. Thinking we would have been really late for the party, it turned out that it hadn’t even started yet.

The party didn’t start till about an hour later.

Some questions we may want to ask are:  Are we actually born with the culture of African time? Is it genetic or is it that we begin to pick it up with time? Do we get to a certain age where we have to imbibe the culture of African time or do we just conform to the majority not that we actually want to imbibe it?

Let’s take a look at the standard African time mentality which is very typical of most Africans (Nigerians especially).

THE STANDARD AFRICAN TIME MENTALITY.

 EVENT ORGANISERS:

We want the event to start off at 6pm 'prompt' so we have to put 5pm(AF time) on the fliers.

GUEST:

An event for 5pm?? Oh common!! That’s too early now!. I’ll try and be there for 6pm though.(AF time).   

AT 6PM  

GUEST: That’s true!! Let me call Dave.

Hey Dave, u going for the event? What time are u gon be there? Ok he’s gon be there for 7 ish, Ama be there for 8 then. Can’t be the first to show up. I’ll go shower at 7.

AT 7PM 

GUEST: I need to get a quick haircut,what shirt and shoes am I going to wear!! Where the hell did Ubong take the car to? Now am gona be late!. 

AT 8.15PM 

GUEST: Out of the shower, Now where’s that mad outfit! I need to call Tobi (one of the organizers) to find out how many people are there already.

Hey Tobz are people there yet? Oh people just started coming, ama live at 8.45 then  

AT 9PM 

Yeah, this is it! Time to make that grand entrance.

OMG!! The event hasn’t even started yet. I should have come at 10!! :-(

 

 Not only has the African time been widely accepted, it is also perceived as “cool” to walk into an event about an hour or two late as it conveys some aura of importance, sending a subtle message to the early arrivers that our lives are probably busier and there for, more important than theirs.

As my thoughts depended on the "African time mentality", I realized that as cool as the African time culture may seem, it has really affected us negatively in some ways. Let’s think about it for a second:

When was the last time we made it to work just in time

When was the last time we watched the bride and groom walk down the aisle

When was the last time we made it to the airport in time and dint miss our flight.

When was the last time we saw the beginning of a movie at the movies.

When was the last time we got to church before the bible study, praise and worship.

This practice has eaten deep into our ways that we do not have a sense of urgency to anything what so ever (unless of course it involves money). We stall in almost everything we do and because of this, little or nothing is achieved in the best possible time. Ill managed time allows opportunities to pass us by and hence, we spend more time, energy and resources doing the things that should have taken less.

Dear Africans, Its time we begin to imbibe the new habit of keeping to time. Maybe that job would have been yours if you made it to the interview in time, Maybe you would have saved some money if you didn’t miss your first flight, maybe you may have been the best staff at work if u made it 30 minutes earlier than the less competent staff it was awarded to, maybe you would have been blessed by a messenger or a message if you made it to church in time. Maybe we can all make life easier for us and for everyone around us if we do the right things at the right time and save other peoples time by keeping to time. 

Let's try to be punctual to the places we go for the rest of the week. Enjoy the rest of the week!!. :-)