On African time

Sunday, August 29

Amidst a culture where 11 o-clock routinely means 12:00 or even 1:00pm, I realized that I have not been late practically my whole life, I’ve actually just been on African time. In fact, if I’m going by African standards, I’ve actually been quite early!

This morning Robert arrived at 10am so we could go to church together. I asked him if I had time to grab a quick breakfast (7 minutes to be exact) and he quickly agreed that I should eat. On our way to church I asked what time the service started and Robert replied 10am. I though he had misheard me since we had agreed that we would meet at 10 and then head over, but no we were just planning to arrive after it had started. I later had good reason to be seriously thankful that I not only ate breakfast, but that we also showed up an hour late to church. Even being so late, we still ended up being there for the last 2.5 hours of the service! While the worship was really interesting (with fun dancing), I am not used to such a long service and was antsy and hungry by the end!

After church I went back to the guesthouse to meet up with my classmate Brietta who arrived from Davis. Brietta will be analyzing the saliva samples that will be collected from the study mothers for her dissertation. We went to dinner later and just had so much to talk about! After being here by myself for the past couple of weeks, it is really fun to have a friend from home here with me.