‘Africans,’ said a colleague, ‘Are unable to think about the future, they just live in the present.
‘You can see this in the supermarket, where your favourite item will get lower and lower on the shelf. When will they re-order it? Not until it runs out completely will anyone notice.’
Nigerian time is famous for running at a different rate to European time. The appointment is ….. when? No need to be specific, because no-one will be able to keep to their plans anyway, just turn up when it’s convenient. If the person isn’t there, you’ll wait until they turn up, even if it’s five or six hours.
I had an appointment with the doctor and another person. This latter had been in the UK for a long time getting his medical education, so he knew we’re funny about that sort of thing, and made sure he was on time. It nearly killed him. His driver had a malaria bout and he had to ply him with medicine to get him to drive. Then there was a heavy rainstorm that brought all the traffic to a halt. Luckily he’d made a plan: he had started out 4 hours early in case things went wrong. When we got to the hospital, the doctor wasn’t there. ‘He didn’t say where he was going’, said his PA, Would you like to wait?’ I was annoyed as there was no inclination how long he would be and no clue as to his whereabouts.
When I called him the next day to make a new appointment, he said why didn’t I wait? He wasn’t long. Would I like to come at three? ‘Is that three o’clock Nigeria time,’ I asked, ‘Or European time?’
Of course, time is a modern concept. It started in 1852 when Charles Shepherd of the Greenwich Observatory in London built his ‘master clock’ which would set the time for all clocks. It immediately became useful to set post office clocks by, which meant people could send telegrams to their families around the world. The new railways needed a common time too. Up to then it was a bit haphazard when your train would arrive. The great capitalists of the Age would travel up from London to Liverpool, only to arrive 2 or 3 hours outside their appointment time.
‘Dammit! I was told this train arrived at 11.30 but it’s one o’clock by my watch!’
‘Well it’s 11.30 here!‘
The British became obsessed with accurate timekeeping because their ships were sailing round the world, collecting treasures from other unrecognised cultures in the formation of the British Empire, a history which West Africa knows only too well. Their calculations were often slightly off, as clocks lost time during the long sea voyages and miscalculated the ships longitude (East/West) position. The ships kept wrecking in the rocky seas at the entrance to many a harbour, losing fortunes in cargo for the Empire, or completely sailing past tropical islands full of treasure.
It was incredibly difficult to find a clock which would be unfailingly accurate over long distances and for a long time without reference to the clock at Greenwich. It would have to be strong and durable, able to stand up to salty spray and the pitching movement of a stormy sea, yet delicate enough to read time with optimum precision. No-one had been able to do it, and the Kingdom offered an award of £20,000 for a clock which would succeed. Eventually a young Yorkshireman called John Harrison invented a durable clock held by springs which corrected the motion of the sea.
It worked like this: if you measure local time by the sun, then compare it to the time at Greenwich on your accurate clock, this tells you your longitude, because for every hour’s difference you are 15 degrees from Greenwich, which is 0 degrees. The UK government nevertheless managed to not pay Harrison for his invention, claiming that it was just luck and insisting on experiment after experiment. Eventually, in his late 70s, Harrison petitioned the King himself, who demanded that he be paid.
It was quickly realised that having a common time would benefit businesses in the ‘this busy country’. Fourteen years later, the electronic radio pulse system which set all the official clocks in the country was taken to the US, and benefitted business there too.
Now life in the UK and in the US is incredibly hectic, with every minute of the day accounted for. You can’t get by without a diary, and personal requirements, such as visits to the hairdresser, are squeezed in the half hour between business appointments. If you are ten minutes late, you will lose the contract. You’ll be told, ‘I’ll call you at six’, and that will mean six on the dot. Being even a few minutes late is considered very rude, and also incompetent on your part. Stress and stress-related illnesses are par for the course in the UK, and the consequences of feeling het up and snacking on junk food in between appointments is what leads you to an early death. Having conquered by vaccines the diseases which used to kill us, lifestyle is the greatest threat. But time, we now realise, is money.
My friend was outraged.
‘Africans do think about the future!’ he fumed, ‘We have hopes for ourselves and our families. We make plans. It’s just that we can’t do anything about it.’
There are some business people in Abuja who’ve decided to change this. Although recognising and appreciating the ‘African way of life’, they’ve decided that their vision of Nigeria as a world player is attainable. Using the current policy in the banks of ‘investing in Nigeria’ to back them up, they work on long term strategic planning to develop their businesses and establish themselves as players in the new global society they envisage. Employees and partners are encouraged to develop their own skills and take part in forming policy, in turn helping those under them to develop in preparation for expansion. These new style entrepreneurs, men and women, are beginning to have some reputation among investors as people who stick to agreements and pay their bills on time. Foreign companies can see them as people they can deal with.
You can tell who they are: they look you in the eye, talk straight, are happy to give you clear time frames and costing, and will give you everything in writing. They return your calls. They are frustrated by incompetence and angry at the old style of short-termism, which gives Nigerians a bad name.
Obviously these new entrepreneurs haven’t time to spend sitting around in cafes, but if they did, they would be cybercafés and they’d be online to clients and suppliers! These are the people expats are thinking of when we say: ‘Yes, Nigeria’s going to make it.’
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