To be on time or not?

That is the question I ask almost every day in Gulu. If I know a meeting starts 1.5 hours late, do I show up on time to prove a point or do I cave and go when I think the meeting is going to start? If it’s the latter, am I reinforcing bad practices or supporting cultural realities?

I remember when I was a teenager and I learned about “CP time.” I just thought my mom was late when I was the last one picked from soccer practice every day. I didn’t realize that my mom was genetically and/or culturally predisposed to being late. I’m struggling now with how to nuance this blog with political correctness, but the fact of the matter in my experience (*nuance*) is that black people from Gulu to Philly are late.

Last evening I arrived back from a meeting in Lira and I asked Agnes for an update on the workshop we had planned with one of our partners for the following day. She said all systems were go. That was fine until I queried a bit deeper. It was 5:25pm and one of the presenters had not yet been briefed, the materials were not printed and it was yet unclear if the head of the partner organization would be present. At 6:12pm the partner called and assured me he’d be there. Good to know since people from far away were surely already on their way.

I have learned by now that things have a way of working out in the grassroots. To have faith and patience is key in these situations and since I have neither, I have employed chanting as a technique. My chant is simple but effective when I repeat it over and over: “It will work out. It will work out. Don’t worry. Don’t worry. It will work out.”

This morning I arrived at work at 7:50am. No one else was there even though the workshop organizers were due to meet at 8am. The workshop, according to the agenda, was due to begin at 8:30am in a different location. At 8:15 Agnes arrived. I asked her, in a neutral to almost cheerful tone that I had rehearsed, if the materials had been printed, if our staffer had been briefed and if the program manager would open the workshop that was due to begin in 15 minutes. The answer was “uh, working on, yeah, ok, oh.”

Hmm. “It will work out. It will work out. Don’t worry. Don’t worry. It will work out.” Nope, I couldn’t hold it. Impatience broke through: “Agnes, it’s 8:15 and our agenda says 8:30 start time. I guess this is an African start time.” Ahhh! Terrible I know!

But after this outburst, I felt better and switched to triage-ing. Triage-ing is one of the most important skills I use in grassroots programming. I asked her to shift the organizers meeting to the site of the workshop and to leave the materials with our office assistance. We arrived and I tried to look busy and nonchalantly distracted by preparing my speech. That didn’t work so I held brief individual consultations with each organizer to review their role for the day. At 8:45 I thought we were moving to begin but instead the organizers were called together to discuss the agenda.

We began at 9:25am, an hour after official start time, which is actually ok and even anticipated. I was able to exhale because we had the right combination of participants: enough chiefs, enough farmers, enough women, etc. and we were ready to go. The problem was my anxiety levels for those 55 minutes and indeed the 24 hours before were fluctuating between concerned and nuts. But glancing around, the participants look ready and eager and the organizers were off to a good start. So, aside from the stability and longevity of my mental health, no harm was done.

It’s now 1:10 pm and we’re just beginning the agenda item for the 10:15 am slot. I thought about trying to skip our tea break, but I have learned some time back just how incredibly insensitive that is. The people who came for this training may be chiefs and leaders, but they are still extremely poor and any opportunity to eat should not be denied. It is an insensitive privilege to think otherwise.

So we’re 3 hours behind, but I just watched one of the organizers give a pictorial representation of my program and of the opportunities for our farmer groups. Cool! “It will work out. It will work out. Don’t worry. Don’t worry. It will work out.”