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| Saturday, 31 July 2010 |
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Home  Musings Waiting |
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The headline in the local paper said it all - Tanzania’s Development
Problem Identified: Time Management. The article went on at length;
‘while the average Tanzanian works an 18 hour day, he or she spends too
much time in greetings'
…but perhaps I should explain…
 William at the gate
First, a few observations…William and Yosuf are our Embassy-provided
guards. Each of them works a twelve hour day - they get two days off
after sixty hour’s work and they rotate the night shift every week. The
night shift requires them to stay up all night, but that isn’t the bad
part. The bad part is those damn clouds of mosquitoes - they never go
away and never leave these guys in peace.
William got ‘guard of the month’ yesterday – good job, William! That's
him in the photo above. He's good...the guy has the gate open so fast I
don’t even have to slow down when I come barreling through in the car,
I never even have to beep. It’s not like I keep regular hours either,
where he could know that ‘oh, it’s six-thirty, so Mike should be coming
home.’ I just sort of come and go, and (as far as I know) he has never
mistakenly opened the gate for another car – really quiet a feat. In
between times he sits as still as a lizard in his little plastic chair,
eyes closed to slits. I think of this as his Zen pose.
Down the dusty road from here, just beyond the kids’ school, is Four
Corners – a place where every corner is crammed wall-to-wall with
little tin shacks called ‘dukas’, the local word for store.  Waiting at 4 Corners Duka
So what is everybody waiting for? Sunglass sellers ply their wears
With thirty five million people, most making about a buck a day, it can
take a lot of waiting before a buck will pass your way. There just
isn’t a whole lot of money to chase around – to a certain extent there
isn’t much to do other than to simply sit and hope and wait.
And that brings us back to the article I read the other day. The
article says that the survey results conclusively showed that the
average Tanzanian sleeps from ten p.m. to four a.m., or an average of
six hours every day. The article also says, ‘that means Tanzanians work
eighteen hours every day’. Now at first blush, you might be tempted to
say, ‘whoa, you can’t work every other hour of the day!’…but if you
said that, you wouldn’t be counting the waiting. Because if you say
'working' includes - not just the lucky few with real paid work - but
also all those willing to work but having to wait until a buck finally
comes their way, then pretty much everyone is working every waking hour
of the day.
And that’s where Time Management final comes into play. it
seems this survey also found that Tanzanians spend an average of three
minutes greeting each and everyone they meet ("how’s the work, how’s
the family, how are the kids at home?" - that’s the typical line - to
which you answer ‘peaceful’ every time).  Fruit stand lady waits... |
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Heard This? |
La kuvunda(kuvunja) halina rubani.
=
A vessel running agroud has no captain. |
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