No hurry in Africa

Long lost stories – part 2

 'No hurry in Africa'

- How to avoid stress and burn-outs… A story inspired by a Ugandan passenger wearing a t-shirt with the brilliant words: ´No hurry in Africa´ (got this t-shirt for my birthday by the way )

As you all know Africa is known for its relaxedness and ‘mañana/mañana-culture’. Take it easy! Almost everything goes slowly here (with the exception of boda boda’s…).

Well, I can truly say that those prejudices are true. To give you an idea, see our never-ending internet story:

After weeks of waiting and calling and waiting and calling and more calling… and some more waiting, we finally had our internet installed... An average phone conversation with our ‘internet guy’ would be like this:

Internet guy: ‘I’ll be there at noon’

Marieke: ‘Okay, I’ve known you for some time now, please specify ‘noon’...’

Internet guy: ‘Alright, I mean noon sharp, at 12.00’

Marieke: ‘Okay, that is noon sharp African time or noon sharp real time?’ (very important distinction…)

Internet guy: ‘No, no, real time, I’ll be there at noon!’

But… Of course, Africa wouldn’t be Africa if we weren't waiting for mister internet for another two days (‘yeah, yeah, I had to go out of town, traffic jam, bla bla...)

Unfortunately our internet has stopped working about a month ago now, as the neighbour guy thought it was necessary to boycott our internet-access… He had come to our place a few times asking us to update his anti-virus and the first few times we allowed him. But when we found out that he wanted to have our password, things became different. When he came again, telling Billie (Ugandan people can be very straightforward when they need something) that he wanted his anti-virus updated again, Billie told him that she was busy with her own work and that he could maybe go to Bubbles, the Irish Pub (around the corner and free wireless internet). But he didn’t believe that there was free internet there and left our place grumpy… Within one hour the internet suddenly stopped working… So Billie and I looked at each other like: hmmm… Witchcraft or what?! Well, let’s wait, it happens more often, it’ll probably come back soon. But when the next day nothing has changed, it was time to call our internet guys again. You call in the morning, they show up in the evening (not bad, I must say…). But when they couldn’t find the problem either, the equipment on the rooftop had to be checked… And guess what was the case? The cable was being CUT…… Yes, cut! Guess who…?

Because there was only an internet signal found on our neighbour’s roof top, they had installed it there (with their permission), but now Mister Neighbour didn’t want to have it there anymore and there was no way you could talk to him. And as the signal on our house is not strong enough, it’s kind of impossible to have internet again at our place… But of course, we had already paid for another month (ridiculous amount of money by the way), so now we’re still trying to get some money back, although that ain’t easy in Africa…

The only way to get things done quickly is to be tough when you talk to them. And believe me, I can be a tough girl on the phone… heheh.

Going to the supermarket is also quite something. The cashiers are usually not the fastest workers and get easily distracted by everything around. And most of the time the scanners fail to work as well. So then, someone needs to be called, that someone needs to come to the cashier, then, that someone needs to go and find the product, check the price, come back and 10 minutes later you got the price… It also happens that the power goes off all of a sudden. So there you are, in a dark supermarket, waiting for god-knows-what. After about 10 minutes of waiting, our cashier brought up the brilliant idea of using her calculator to count up the final amount… Luckily we stood in her queue, as the other cashiers were still looking around, not having a clue of what to do… Why would you, no need to hurry, right?! Cause it also applies here:  ‘there’s no hurry in Africa’. Period.

And then, at the far extent, you have the super-relaxed rastafari’s. Every week, at the jam session, the whole rastafari-community gathers, most of them trying to get into conversations with you. But in most cases this is basically impossible, due to the amount of ‘ganja’ (marihuana) that they have smoked… (not even mentioning the beers). Though, of course they’re not all like that. Most of them just have a natural relaxedness over themselves: ‘yo girl, how ya doin? Yeah, you’re my sister, I’m yo brother, one love! Yeah… Sing with me gal: one love, one heart, let’s get together and things are gonna be alright!’

So, for those who are feeling stressed and who could use some easy-going-life-flow, I can definitely recommend you a trip to Uganda and I promise you: Things are gonna be alright…!