We Have Watches
A little African cultural note...
We are very much a time-oriented people. Everything has a definite start time and end time, and even if we absolutely love what we're doing, it sure as heck better not run longer than scheduled because we have very important things to do.
Africans, however, are not the least bit bound by the clock. Gordon Fort, VP of the Office of Overseas Operations, told a story last night in cultural worship about a missionary who had just arrived in Zimbabwe and had asked the local pastor what time church started. The pastor told him 10 o'clock AM. The missionary showed up at 9:30. The pastor showed up at 10:55. The missionary was furious and told the pastor that "God respects time." The pastor, quite confused, said to the missionary, "But isn't it 10 o'clock for the whole hour?"
There's a proverb that very well sums up this difference between the African and American concepts of time: "You Americans have watches, but we Africans have time."
posted by Embabazi @ 12:53 AM
2 comments
2 Comments:
I think we should start preparing for a non-time-oriented culture now!
Haha...that's a good one! Yeah this non-time-oriented culture can become pretty frustrating at times. But them again it's sort of nice if you are a person that likes to run late! Actually it's funny some of my Ugandan friends tease me that I am now an 'African', but the bad thing is a lot of times I am late when they are on-time! :)
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