#35 – Sept 4th 2007

On the sidelines…

Mpola mpola, slowly by slowly. An expression common in Uganda, an expression fitting of Uganda. Things happen slowly here. There has not been a single instance of something happening on time since my arrival, only somewhere in the near vicinity. It is safe to assume things will happen one hour later than you originally planned. It is not unusual for that hour to turn into four or five. If you are taking a bus somewhere, don’t expect it to pick you up or drop you off anywhere near the time it claims it will. Have a coffee date? Add one hour. Dinner date? Hour and a half. Not once, not twice, but four times I’ve had friends panicking because their ride to the airport was an hour late. You can actually judge how long someone has stayed in Uganda by how early they ask the driver to arrive to drive them to the airport. One woman was here for three weeks and almost missed her flight. Natalie and Peter scheduled the driver two hours before they were actually supposed to leave, and he arrived two hours late. They were right on time.

Over the past four months I’ve gradually adopted this mentality as well, of “African time,” as Ugandans call it. Gradually I stopped becoming anxious when I was running fifteen minutes late for a meeting. Soon that fifteen minutes became a half hour, eventually that turned into an hour when I realized everyone else wouldn’t arrive on time. Now my anxiety level rarely rises, and for those that know me, you can appreciate what an accomplishment that is. I’m never in a hurry, I’m never upset when someone shows up late. There is no late. And you know what? Things still get done. I’m not sure why things work this way here; it could be the hot weather that slows everything down, it could even be the lack of time-telling apparatuses. It could be the obtuse amount of carbohydrates people eat, making them lethargic. It could be cultural. If running around, hectic and stressful, isn’t going to improve your life in any way, its not going to make you more money or make you happier, why would you do it? Life is going to continue along the same path whether you rush or take it slow. It’s quite possible that if you sprint to the finish you’ll miss what’s on the sidelines.

The constant rush I experienced in Canada, the drive to get things done faster, the scramble to make more money, chasing the coveted “more” of everything – it is exhausting and counter-productive. This “more” we are always striving for is not the buried treasure it is portrayed as. In most cases this “more” is quite the opposite. It is a jackal waiting to shackle you to the hamster wheel. You’ll end up in perpetual motion, unfamiliar with your surrounds, your friends and family, everything will become a blur of obtaining material goods to satisfy your addiction to “more”. The purpose of your life will be distorted and diluted until you think happiness is what you feel when you purchase something new. If you find yourself running hurriedly toward that buried treasure take a moment to consider jumping off the track and following “African time” for a while. Take a moment to discover whether all that rushing is taking you in the right direction; to see whether that “more” you are seeking is what you really want, or if you’ve been running too fast to see that the happiness you seek is actually on the sidelines.

~Nicole