African Time

People will tell you that African Time means that everything happens three hours later than it's supposed to. That's a misconception. African Time means that everything takes three hours longer than it ought to. Here's how.

My counterpart and I were visiting drop-in centres today. The plan was that we would go today, tomorrow, and Friday, visiting probably about five centres a day in our quest to eventually visit each centre three times (by the way, we're still on the first round). We were supposed to meet up as usual at seven-thirty in front of Mopani Spar, the grocery store near the taxi rank.

Usually something happens to foil this. Sometimes, my counterpart is late. Sometimes, my supervisor, whose car we use, is late. Sometimes, everyone is actually on time but we spend an hour at the office for unknown reasons. Because I take public transportation and know that my options are fifteen minutes early or twenty minutes late, I'm usually fifteen minutes early (sleep deprivation by the end of the week may make it my fault we're late this Friday, though). Today, they were both late. More accurately, my supervisor was with the car (and my host mom, so I should've seen this coming) in Malamulele, a town to the north of here, and didn't get in until around nine. My counterpart however did not see this coming and was going to meet them at the office and then pick me up in town. In fairness, she called me when she realized this was going to take longer than expected, about fifteen minutes after our meeting time. Oh, by the way, it's the dead of winter here and I was cold.

Fortunately I was very bundled up, had a magazine, and there weren't any random people to harass me because nobody was at Mopani Spar because it was on fire on Monday. Yep. People told me it burned down and I imagined ashes on the ground, but actually they put it out before it got to that stage. Word is it will be closed for two months at least, which leaves me with the dilemma of where to buy groceries, but that's another story. Anyway, as far as standing in the cold on random sidewalks go, it wasn't that bad. I anticipate these things now.

Elisa at last did arrive, around nine (did I mention I woke up at six? I did. That's sleep I could have had), and we drove off to fill up with petrol. While at the filling station, she mentions, oh by the way, we can't do site visits tomorrow, Queen (my supervisor) needs to car to go to a meeting in Polokwane. I kinda saw this coming, too. Last time we had three days of site visits scheduled we missed the middle one because it was Election Day (that one we really should've seen coming). We need to schedule three days just to assure we'll get one.

And then we drove to the first site, Loloka. Not only does this involve driving out of town and eventually turning onto dirt roads that have bumps on their bumps, we also don't actually know where the drop-in centre is, so we have to keep stopping to ask people. Sometimes the people jump in the car with us and give us directions from the backseat. This happens pretty much every time. I'm still impressed that Elisa knows where all the villages are, since some of them have some pretty gnarly turnoffs from the main road.

When we do arrive, we are greeted either with great excitement or bewilderment. Both of these are time-consuming. If it's great excitement, we have to sit around and greet each and every person individually. There is small talk. If it's bewilderment, underlings (carers and cooks) get on the phone with or send a small child off to find the supervisors who have all of the documents, etc. that we want to see. Then, we do the actual evaluations, which takes maybe half an hour, including going over the most egregious things that can be corrected. Like totaling income and expenditures to get a balance, grr, did you not go to the financial management course or did the trainers decide to skip the most important part or just screw it up /rant. After that, we are fed. Tea and bread, cold drink and pap, whatever. We are guests and therefore we must be fed. I don't eat actual meals at home on site visit days, the five meals I eat during the visits are pretty hard on my stomach. Then there are lengthy farewells, and at last we leave, to repeat the cycle again, driving a ways to the next village over.

Just when I think it's about to end, it's not. Today, we were driving back to Giyani and we passed a bunch of people from two other drop-in centres walking by the side of the road. So we stopped for twenty minutes to hang out by the side of the road with them. Which was perfectly entertaining. But that is why everything takes longer in Africa.

On the way home, we decided we would do site visits tomorrow anyway using public transportation. I'm excited to see how that will add a new wrinkle to the experience.