Time

Fall is here and starting to feel cold to us!

I have a watch now. At some point I lost my watch on the islands and never replaced it. There were still clocks around so I wasn’t completely timeless. But generally I have only had a general sense of the time. So it has been at least a couple years since I’ve had a watch and as soon as I strapped it on my wrist I felt this change. This responsibility. This transition back to the Western time-oriented society.

One of the first lessons of living in Africa is that African cultures tend to not be time-oriented like Western cultures. Events don’t have start and end times. They start when they start and they end when they end. It means it is hard to predict how long things will take. Eventually I started to plan on only getting one thing done each morning and one thing done each afternoon— rather than putting my hopes in finishing a long to-do list each day. Sometimes I got lots of stuff done, but when it didn’t work out that way I wasn’t disappointed or frustrated like I had been at the beginning.

But I was still frustrated sometimes with what felt like wasted time. Mainly this happened when I showed up to an event (at what I thought was the correct time) only to sit there for up to an hour or more before it got started. Then I got it into my head that islanders just start everything late. So I would just go late to things. Sometimes this worked great. I was right on time! But other times I’d arrive and the event would already be ending or even over.

I didn’t understand it. “Events start when they start.” But often they would give an exact start time for the beginning— which was sometimes accurate and sometimes completely off. How did islanders know when to arrive? 

Well eventually we lived on the islands long  enough that the mystery started to unravel somewhat. On the islands many people don’t have watches. They very rarely know the exact time. But they always know the 5 calls to prayer (at dawn, when the sun is at its highest, in the afternoon, at dusk and at night). The time of the 5 calls to prayer change slightly throughout the year as the day shortens and lengthens.

Kids at homeschool

So the first piece of the mystery was that events usually happened after one of the prayers. The people would go to pray and then afterward they’d head to the event. For men, they went to prayer dressed up for their event, so men’s events usually started right after prayer. Women usually got ready for the event after the call to prayer so women’s events started later.

So if we get an invitation on the island with an afternoon start time— then we’d look up the time of the afternoon call to prayer and adjust based upon whether it is a men’s or women’s event. So island punctuality isn’t second nature to us, but we have a little more confidence that we won’t be completely early or late anymore.

I’ve had the watch for a couple weeks…. I  forget to put it on a lot.

PRAYERS ANSWERED
We were blessed to have different opportunities to connect with old friends and new families. It is always great to get chances to share about our lives and work on the islands.  We also feel blessed to be present during some critical moments in the lives of friends and family— like birthdays, loss and new birth. 

PRAYERS REQUESTED
It was a bad week for Megan’s back. She has an appointment with a specialist this coming week. Pray for that appointment and for how things proceed.from that.  Pray for our friends in the islands.  We miss them and continue to pray for their lives and families to be transformed. Pray for the ongoing plans to continue the work on Clove Island.