Time

I want to share a few excerpts from Ryszard Kapuscinski’s The Shadow of the Sun since his writing is so wonderfully descriptive and keenly observed. The first few chapters in the book are from his time in Ghana in 1958. From the chapter The Road to Kumasi:

We climb into the bus and sit down. At this point there is a risk of culture clash, of collision and conflict. It will undoubtedly occur if the passenger is a foreigner who doesn’t know Africa. Someone like that will start looking around, squirming, inquiring, “When will the bus leave?”

“What do you mean, when?” the astonished driver will reply. “It will leave when we find enough people to fill it up.”

The European (and American) and the African have an entirely different concept of time. In the European worldview, time exists outside man, exists objectively, and has measurable and linear characteristics.

For Africans, it is a much looser concept, more open, elastic, subjective. It is man who influences time, its shape, and rhythm. It is a subservient, passive essence, and, most importantly, one dependent on man.

The absolute opposite of time as it is understood in the European worldview.
In practical terms, this means that if you go to a village where a meeting is scheduled for the afternoon but find no one at the appointed spot, asking, “When will the meeting take place”” makes no sense. You know the answer: “It will take place when people come.”