Africa Time!

Time is disappearing between my fingers. That’s what happens when you live on “Africa time”. Africa time is more than just an abstract concept; it is a way of life, a rule to live by, a mantra to repeat and internalise. The choice is simple: accept the fact that time is meaningless, or lose your sanity. I have noticed, already on my first day here, that nothing here happens on time. Now I know why. Nothing happens on time because time does not exist here. Time is merely a remote idea
that has been marketed successfully in large parts of the western world, but it has nothing to do with life here. It seems that Kenyans are demonstratively and passionately indifferent to time.
After learning to read the time in Swahili I decided to adopt the African time concept and forget about its existence. Those of you who speak a bit of Swahili know that the language reflects a very particular attitude to time. In Swahili time is measured from around sunrise, what we misperceive as six o’clock am. That means that when asked for the time (slim chance of that happening here, but stay with me – it’s only getting increasingly confusing) one should always subtract six hours from what the watch shows. Does it say quarter to five? Answer quarter to eleven. Could anything be more confusing? I doubt it. With this way of reading the time, I too find it easier to just ignore it.

A couple of weeks ago the Nairobi police launched a crackdown on the citie's matatus. Every once in a while the matatu driver would turn around and tell the passengers to buckle up before driving on. On some matatus there were even seatbelts. Failing to buckle up on time would result in the driver and the disobedient passenger having to bribe the officer. At times an officer would stop a matatu, recite a standard list of faults with the vehicle - a list which would usually prove to be correct, even if inexhaustive – tell all the passengers to get off and discreetly get his bribe from the driver. This police crackdown has caused drivers to raise prices by hundreds of percents. The twenty shillings it usually costs me to get home from town turned into a hundred overnight, and on other lines the same fare was raised to as much as two hundred.

All that made the traffic chaos also known as Nairobi even more chaotic. At times I would, together with other volunteers, arrive to a meeting with a delay of over two hours. Yet, all apologies and explanations were unnecessary. Africa time. At least we manage to arrive on the right date.

I spent most of last week digging a trench. Maji Mazuri's orphanage is located at the foot of a hill and the entire neighbourhood’s sewage water accumulates in its back garden which then turns into a delightful pool of liquid manure. Yet, the simple idea of digging a trench to divert the water to an open pipe that lies not five metres away from the source of the flood seems to have been revolutionary. A week of digging in the sun together with a friend volunteer and a couple of workers from the orphanage made us realise how ridiculously things are being run here. That problem had existed for years, and had never been taken care of because during the rainy season it is impossible to dig a trench in that soil, and during the dry season... well, during the dry season there is no reason to dig a trench now, is there? We did feel good about having done that good deed, but what an incredible waste of time we thought it was. Yet – no one else was troubled by it. Have I mentioned Africa time yet?

On the Thursday of that week we visited one of Maji Mazuri's two schools. It is a combined elementary and secondary school with boarding facilities, located in a small town outside Nairobi. We were to spend the night there before heading farther away from Nairobi the next day to visit the organisation's other school. For supper the matron served us chapatti and Ndengu, a dish which only differs itself from regular lentils soup by its very distinct lack of taste. In our search for water in the morning the matron was again more than happy to assist. She uncovered the well and pulled up a bucketful of brown water we were told was drinkable. We were happy just to wash our faces and then rub the sand off.

Then we went to visit the next school which lies beyond another small town. With that small town being our reference point as the nearest big city, we knew that we have done our outermost to avoid skyscrapers, convenient stores, theatres, pubs, nightlife, public toilets, electricity, running water, sanitation and other big city hassles. Once away from the main road, we had to walk a fair distance into the great big nothing that lay all around until some small metal shacks surrounded by small run-down farms began to appear. The school lay about forty five minutes of steady walk away from the road and was far from being the palace we deserved after such a trip. Three buildings of exposed bricks and cement welcomed us and imposed the charm of a well kept garbage dump. The teachers’ residence was a three story building; a two story building was future boarding facilities, and a one story building accommodated the classrooms. There were four doors that lead to eight classrooms. Every couple of classes were separated from each other by wooden planks, and during lessons the noise from the neighbouring classes was unbearable.

The school is a part of a project which also includes a farm where Maji Mazuri's people train the locals, mainly members of the Maasai tribe, in agriculture. Among the different crops on the farm are kale, maize, cucumber, different herbs and more. A bore-hole supplies the farm with enough water for irrigation of the crops as well as for selling water to the community. Women carrying large plastic containers of twenty and forty litres on their backs walking for miles on end to and from the farm are a very common sight.

We received a warm welcome, and the head master was thrilled to hear that I wished to spend some time at the school. I am under the impression that they very rarely get volunteers in that school, and definitely not ones who spend the night there. We agreed that I would come on the following Monday and stay at the school for as long as I wished. The offer was too good to refuse, so I didn’t. I spent the following weekend preparing for the journey, and on Monday morning, only an hour and a half behind schedule, I found myself squeezed between a matatu window on my right and too many people with too much luggage on my left, praying for a quick arrival before I turn two dimensional for good.

I got off the matatu in the middle of nowhere. A marabu stork picking at a dead monkey on the road and an unrecognisable bird of prey sitting on a fence have dismissed me as too alive and went on with their business, though I’m sure, once passed them, the marabu looked up from its road-kill lunch in an attempt to assess how much life I really still had in me.

On arrival to the school I have been shown to my quarters, a room beautifully equipped with a floor and a disproportionately big window. With the kind help of the head master, and workers from the farm we covered most of the window with a metal sheet. We have arranged for some wooden planks on four blocks to constitute a bed, and my castle was completed.

I began to study my new surroundings, and quickly realised that there was not much to study. Surrounded by vast emptiness only disturbed by some acacia trees scattered around, I could see the nothingness spread all the way to the horizon. Only four days later would someone find out by chance that I hadn’t been told about the ostriches, gazelles, zebras and giraffes that wander about around the school and that one only had to walk about fifty metres down the valley to see them.

I spent my time observing the teachers at their work, getting to know the pupils, teaching, getting into the school’s rhythm and becoming one of the staff as much as possible. The weather has been fantastic all week, and on Tuesday morning I have seen a sunrise so beautiful, that it made me get up early every single morning since, armed with a camera and a great desire to get it over and done with and go back to sleep. Alas, all the mornings since have been clouded, and the most remarkable thing about them was, according to some sources, a white man that has been seen wandering around by himself, holding a camera, staring at the grey sky and cursing to himself.

On Thursday, after being told about the wildlife in the area, I went with the head master, whose knowledge of the area is encyclopaedic and whose talent for spotting the smallest of creatures can only be matched by that of an eagle, to see if we could find anything of interest. Within no time we looked at about ten gazelles that ran away from us, two ostriches that turned their backs on us as well, and four giraffes. When I say we saw I mean that the head master spotted them on the horizon, and pointed them out to me without success. I only saw unrecognisable tiny spots on the horizon. Only after a long explanation and an even longer walk did I see the giraffes. At some point we stood at a distance of a stone throw away from them. They studied us carefully, decided we were neither dangerous nor nutritious and kept on eating leaves off the acacia tops. At some point they decided to go for a jog, and we saw them run together gracefully, unfortunately away from us.

On Friday we had a parents meeting. It was scheduled for nine o’clock and by nine twenty we already had two parents waiting. The head master decided it was time for action and sent all the children home to call their parents. Some of the children had to walk an hour and a half each way for that. I was slowly running out of patience, as I was supposed to go back to Nairobi after the meeting. But here I go again talking about time as if it existed… Once the first ten parents arrived we started the meeting, and I even got the chance to conduct an interview for my project with three Maasai fathers. Unfortunately, their English was broken at best and it was very difficult to get anything out of the conversation. I recorded the interview with my mp3 player. That little gadget fascinated them, and they couldn’t keep their hands away from it, turning it around and staring at the running digits on its screen. Eventually even the bit of intelligible English spoken there had gone lost in the background of fingers rubbing against the microphone, the player being tossed around, played with, laid upside-down and so on…

Now, after a relaxing weekend of finalizing my field notes I am ready to go back to the field – will be there from tomorrow morning until Friday.

P.S. Something about Kenyans and the English language. Kenyans have a very particular way of choosing their words, and as a rule they would always use the words that would sound most sophisticated. For example, they never “help”, but they “assist”. They hardly ever “look” or “watch”, but they “observe” often. A Kenyan would never “water” the plants, but won’t mind “irrigating” them, and even though they often get on matatus and busses, they never “get off” them - they always “alight”.