I have the punctuality of a bus driver. What I mean is, I think in terms of minutes and seconds. When I was driving buses, I always showed up at least 5 minutes early for my shifts. If other drivers were 2 or 3 minutes late, I'd get irritated. My life is orderly when I can map out a schedule - in 15 minute increments - and execute it pretty much on time.
I can be flexible, but I don't really like to be. I pretend I prefer to be casual about time. But really, I can't handle that too much.
And so, of course, God drops me into a culture where time is kind of irrelevant.
Sure, some people have jobs in the city, or they go to school. Those people have some concept of showing up within a few minutes of a designated time. But most people come from backgrounds where their concept of time is broken down into days and weeks. They may be able to show up to work on time, but for social meetings they prefer to relax and follow the ways of the countryside.
Hence, my problem. This week I talked to my neighbor's son. I love this kid, so I offered to teach him English when he has free time. He says, "Saturday afternoon, I have time. Should I come find you or do you want to come find me?"
Question: What does "Saturday afternoon" mean? Does it mean between 12:01 and 4:59? Does it mean after the noon time rest - after 2pm? Does the afternoon end at a certain time? When does it begin?
Another friend wanted to hang out on Sunday. She told me, "Sunday I don't have to work. Come find me in the afternoon." I asked what time, she wouldn't say.
This is a huge problem for me - defining time. In the case of my neighbor's son. I went to look for him on Saturday around 1:30, he wasn't home. I waited in my house for a few hours - doing homework and tidying up - but he never came.
And so this is my life. People make vague plans. I wait around so that I won't miss them, but then I miss them. Or in other cases, I waste a bunch of time going off to find people, but they're not where they said they'd be when I get there. I don't want to appear over anxious, or uptight about punctuality. So I casually shrug off the missed opportunities to hang out, secretly stewing inside because of another wasted afternoon.
The really hard part is that I keep trying to measure my productivity by how much I get done in a day. But I look back over weeks and months, and it seems that all my efforts at being productive are thwarted not because of laziness or disorganization on my part, but because other people don't look at time the way I do.
Another difficulty is the feeling that people don't value me the way I do them. In America, I often was hurt by the tardiness of friends, because I felt they didn't respect me enough to respect my time. Here I feel like people forget me and go on without me. I shuffle my day's plans around the 'time' we said we'd meet. But then, because we never nailed down a time, we end up not meeting. So, once again, I feel that my time is not respected, and neither is my presence. Furthermore, I get stuck spending more time by myself, both in waiting for them and in missing my chance to hang out with them.
All I can say after all this, is I'm thankful for the prevalence of cell phones. Without them, I doubt I'd ever get to see any of my friends.
