Bagamoyo (Part 3 of 3)

Why I Took My Watch Off

About a week before our trip to Bagamoyo I had a very bad day.

You may know that the pace of life here in Tanzania is much slower than the pace of life in America. Another piece of this is that things do not start on time and if plans change people are not super good and communicating those changes. I guess they just figure you’ll wait.

On this particular day, to make a long story short, I ended up waiting for about 3 hours to go to town for a meeting with the bishop. I knew we needed to leave by 10:00 for the 11:00 meeting. 10:00 rolled around and no one was there, and then 10:30 came and then 11:00 and by the time the ride arrived at 11:30, I was both fuming and fighting back tears.

Let’s just say that pastor and I had “words” in the car on the way to town. I told him that I was disappointed that he hadn’t told me about the change in our meeting time and that I certainly could have had things to work on instead of sitting and waiting for him.

At lunch we had a nice conversation with the bishop, the assistant to the bishop, and a man from Canada who had recently been on a mission trip with the Northern Diocese. They were talking about the pace of life in Africa when the Canadian said, “I love the phrase ‘African’s have time and North American’s have watches.'” At this, pastor just started laughing, uncontrollably really. He was looking at me through the laughter, hoping that I had understood the sentiment of this phrase.

I did.

I apologized on the way home for my complete lack of patience.

Then, when we got ready to leave for Bagamoyo I took my watch off and I haven’t put it on again since.

This is completely trite to say, but it is also completely true – taking my watch off has saved my African life!

So even though the trip to Bagamoyo was long and full of problems and massive amounts of waiting, I didn’t spend the time calculating the hours I just played pitch and sang Christmas songs. I didn’t worry about what time dinner was, I just walked on the beach and collected sea shells. I didn’t fuss about the last short hour we had to spend the morning before we left, I just sat on the beach and enjoyed the sunrise.

I don’t usually wear a watch at home because there is always a clock somewhere, on my cell phone, in my car, glaring at me from my computer screen. For this trip I decided to start wearing it because there are not many clocks hanging on walls, so I thought I needed it. I did not.

Here are a few of the things I saw and did in Bagamoyo when I wasn’t fixated on the time:

Gazing at brilliant flowers.

Climbing 500 year old trees.

 

Appreciating nature's beautiful produce.

Today I’m sitting here in the office for a 9:00 meeting and no one is here.   I’m not completely sure what time it is, but it is certainly after 10:00 and I really don’t care.  Let me apologize in advance to my coworkers who will need to be patient with me in August when I will have to coax myself out of the “no clock euphoria” I am currently enjoying.