A few thoughts on time

So I am realizing that my concept of having lots of free time here doesn’t exactly represent the reality. Before arriving I pictured moving at the American pace, which I quite like, while everyone else moved at the Mauritanian pace. I quickly realized that it was not going to be possible. Not only would I drive myself crazy with impatience, but it physically wouldn’t work because the people I work with and interact with operate with a difference conception of time. I hear the word “faad” which means “wait” a lot. For example, immediately after eating lunch a friend was getting up to go and our host hold him to “faad ngam hirtari” “wait for dinner,” which at that time was seven hours away!

However, the fact that I am going to be operating on a different time scale is not what is really interesting to me. What I am still trying to wrap my head around is how I spend so much of my day not doing anything but don’t feel that I have that much free time. It seems entirely counterintuitive to me. The best explanation I have for it is because I spend so much time waiting for an event to happen, some one to show up, the hour long tea round to be finished, etc, in my mind that time is tied up in the activity that I am waiting for that the intervening hour(s) don’t feel like free time, and pass without anything happening because I continue to wait. My solution for this is to never be without a book, but at the end of the day I often find myself wondering how I did so little while feeling like that I was doing something the whole day. (Cara you were right about this.)

I think it also has something to do with the fact that during the first few months after I arrived here, when didn’t really understand the language, I developed an ability to sit for hours not doing anything and not notice the passing of time. That is, not be bored out of my mind. I can’t say that it is a preferred activity, but it is a valuable skill here.