Time as Suspended and Fluid

Here in Ghana, we run on what is playfully regarded as "African time." Take the following example:

Last weekend I went with my host family to a wedding in Tema, a suburb of Accra which--dependent upon traffic--is about 45 minutes from my house in Adenta. Although the traditional marriage (the formal marriage agreement and requisite exchange of gifts between the two families involved) had occurred months earlier, I, along with my host family, was invited to attend the wedding ceremony on Saturday and the thanksgiving service on Sunday. The Saturday ceremony was lavish and joyful: family and friends crowding the elegant Catholic church, high ceilings and wide open interior not simply inviting but commanding us to sway along with the music as the gospel choir joined the highlife band to lead our singing, the bride and groom seated at the front of the church as they ignored the heat and trickling perspiration and just beamed. For what Onyame has joined together, no one should separate.

Sunday morning, a lingering happiness in my heart, I arose punctually for my morning run through my neighborhood. The sun peered through a bit of haze and the air, as usual, was humid, but the morning was fresh and my house was engulfed in preparations for the post-thanskgiving service reception: cooking outside in large pots, donning the kente cloth finery in celebration. I had been advised that I would attend a Pentecostal church with my two older host brothers, Junior and Kwabena, before meeting the rest of my family and our gaggle of houseguests in Tema for the thanksgiving service between 9:00 and 9:30. Expecting to leave around 8:00 for church, I had run, bathed from the usual bucket, and eaten and was ready to go by 7:30 (which fortunately afforded me enough time to do some last-minute ironing of my new African print dress!). But 8:00 came and went, minutes slipping by until around 8:35 when the three of us finally set off for church. Already skeptical that we would make it to Tema in time for the thanksgiving service to begin, I mentally calculated that we would have to leave church by around 9:00 to be able to attend a reasonably large portion of the thanksgiving service. We arrived at the Pentecostal church at 9:10, just as the sermon was beginning. (Since the service had already been going on for about an hour, the vibrant singing and praise portion was nearly over.) Around 10:45 we set off for Tema, but not before I was introduced to the pastor and offered a bottle of papaya juice at a small "first timer welcome" meeting.

In the end, we arrived at the Catholic church in Tema just before 11:30--scant minutes before the end of the service. Yet we had arrived, and we jovially greeted the bride, the groom, my host mom, and the myriad houseguests without even a hint of sheepishness or apology: we were there, and the time at which that became true was inconsequential. African time.

It would not be fair to say I am "subject" to African time as if I were an unwilling participant; rather, it has been easy for me to discard my usual preoccupation with timeliness and embrace the chance to be there when I am there. If my younger host brothers, Kwaku and Kwesi, want me to walk with them to school, I will, though I know waiting for them will make me arrive at work at 8:20 rather than 8:00. εyε bכkככ, it's cool, it's easy, it's all good; my coworkers will be trickling it around then, too. When my tro-tro is hopelessly mired in traffic during the morning commute, εyε bכkככ; although I hesitate to be that tourist by snapping picture after picture of my every day routine and that of my tro-tro comrades, at least I can record these moments mentally.

In contrast to this view of time (εyε bכkככ!), regardless of individuals' political affiliation, economic status, career, or any other factor, it seems that one thing that wields power over Americans' collective existence is the clock. Evidently, this is simply not true in Ghana, and over the last two months, it has not been true for me. (Rather than the clock, the thing that seems to wield an analogous power over my existence here seems to be the mosquito.) Time exists--it must, as part of God's natural order--and yet in Ghana it is no imposing taskmaster. Rather, its application is fluid. Words for precise times were not even part of the Twi language until European influence was established in Ghana, attested to by the facts that "Abכ sεn?", what time is it, literally means "It [the clock, introduced by Europeans] has struck how many?", and "כprεm ato" (noon) refers to the cannons (כprεm) that were fired from European forts at noon every day during the colonial period. Time has always been, but its precise measurement has not.

And so here I am in a place where clocks are not revered and time is fluid. I am suspended in time. Most days, I am aware on some level that I will be going back "home," back to the United States and pancakes and winter and calcium from dairy products, after some time--and yet εyε bכkככ. When I think of home or my mind meanders to May 31, I have no internal countdown clock. I am not uneasy, confronted by dread that someday I might have to leave or overwhelmed with a yearning to get back to all things familiar; time has loosed its grip in that sense.

In a way, part of me (the part that has taxes to pay or party invitations to respond to) is still in the United States, and that part is subject to the hurry of the clock and the press of the daily planner. The other part of me--the real part, the one that breathes, gets dusty feet, prays, and likes waving to the children who cry out, "Obroni!" when I pass them in the street--is in Ghana, though, and this part lives by time, not the impositions or demands of the clock. Rather than being commanded by the clock, I am suspended in time. African time.