Dispatch from Rwanda – Musings on Africa Time, Mr White Man’s Time and Capitalism
Kigali, Rwanda
I’m a little late in posting this, but life caught up to me and I forgot to finish editing this piece. I wrote this while traveling in Rwanda back in November 2021. I’m curious to hear what you think about it, do get in touch and let me know hello@mariana-luna.com if you’d like! I hope you enjoy this!
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes, 37 seconds
~
The loud sunrise wakes me up before my alarm clock. I’m lying in a bed under a mosquito net in a drab but practical room in the middle of Kigali, Rwanda. The air is humid and warm, smelling faintly of burning wood. Foreign sounding birds chirp outside my window, briefly louder than the low hum of smoggy traffic rolling by. I’m staying above an Indian restaurant which never seems to have customers. I think we’re the only ones here.
My mind starts thinking about the Rwandan take on the burrito I tried the day before. It pleasantly surprised my Californian-Mexican taste buds with its spicy salsa, smoky chickpeas, beans and chapati for tortilla. Globalization is weird.
It’s also weird that I’m here. A spontaneous decision landed me in the heart of East Africa as Covid and Winter surge back home in Berlin. It was as much a decision to counter my recent Vipassana meditation retreat as it was a way to quell my wanderlust and escape the cold and grey of Northern Europe. However, after nearly two years of not traveling anywhere outside of familiar places and cultures, Rwanda feels overwhelming.
Except it’s really not. The overwhelm exists in my head, resulting from the thousands of worries and stresses I carried with me from Germany.
Kigali is a relaxed city from what I’ve experienced so far. The overall pace here is slower. People seem to walk slower, speak slower, do bureaucracy and just about everything a little slower (except the moto-taxi drivers, they’re maniacs on the road). It’s a speed I’m not used to. Why is everything so urgent in the West?
Taking my phone out, I turned to Google. This phenomenon of slowness is sometimes described as “Africa Time” and it’s apparently a thing all over the continent. Africa Time is described as a more relaxed attitude towards time, including a more leisurely and less rigorously scheduled lifestyle.
Some argue this nonchalant, easy attitude towards time is keeping Africa as a whole in a state of underdevelopment and is something that should be changed. A contest was held in Ivory Coast to try to encourage employees to be on time. The winner would receive a US$60,000 villa. Reuters reported, “Legal adviser Narcisse Aka, winner of what the organizers hope will be an annual event, is so unusually good at being punctual that his colleagues call him ‘Mr White Man’s Time.’”
Mr White Man’s Time. The words sink in.
What a perfect description to explain the ultra-punctual, clock ruled western culture I’ve grown up in. Every minute of everyone’s day seems to be scheduled down to the last second and optimized for the most productivity and output. We live bombarded with capitalist colloquialisms like “time is money” and ask each other, “what’s your schedule like?” or “what are you doing this weekend?”. Weekends and schedules are relatively new concepts in human history, just check the etymology of the word “schedule” – it only dates back to the mid 19th century.
Capitalism succeeds in part, I gather, because of its ability to control and weaponize our time. Our time does not belong to us. In most employment settings we must ask for permission to take time off (if it’s allowed at all), we are expected at meetings or at the office at certain times. We work when we’re sick.
For the vast majority of workers, time is traded for money and the threat of losing our livelihood keeps us locked into this endless hamster wheel for survival and some vague promise of future peace and security. We cut ourselves off from our own bodies, nature and its rhythms, and each other. I don’t think this by mistake.
Perhaps Africa Time can be perceived as a remaining resistance towards fully accepting capitalism’s imperialist colonialist yoke. At least the anti-capitalist in me wants to believe this is the case.
In this sense, I do believe that one of the most radical things we can do under late-stage capitalism is rest and take ownership of our time - without guilt or self-judgement (thanks to the Nap Ministry for this inspiration). In doing so we actively question the Western axioms around time being something rigid, linear, measurable, dividable, predictable and precise. In other words, something that tangibly exists. Time is an illusion, after all. It’s just our way of making sense of our human experience (Physicists agree).
Concretely this might mean taking a mental health day, actually taking your vacation and sick days (I’m looking at you, American friends) or taking restful breaks, napping, having online and availability boundaries, refusing to work more than you’re properly compensated for, rejecting grind culture. Finding small ways to become useless to capitalism.
Perhaps having a more relaxed attitude towards time also helps take the urgency out of our lives and so much of the unnecessary pressure so many of us put ourselves under. I’m not advocating to become lazy, unmotivated or procrastinate, or to stop working altogether (not that most of us can afford to), but rather become a little more flexible, balanced and easygoing with ourselves about wherever we may find be in this exact moment.
It becomes invitation to do things a little more slowly. Breathe in. Breathe out. Relax. As they say in Swahili here in the region, “pole pole” (poh-leh, poh-leh) “slowly, slowly”.
My alarm clock rings.
Turning it off, I relax a bit more into the mattress before heading to my co-working space, deciding that for a few more minutes, I don’t want to be anywhere or anyone except here and now – and that’s enough.
Lake Kivu, Rwanda
~
P.S. This essay is not meant to knock Mr. Aka, the winner of the villa, by the way. I am genuinely impressed by his dedication and winning the competition :D
