Time has been my biggest curse and blessing of Peace Corps. Twenty-seven months is not a short amount of time, despite the Returned Volunteers that say, “Oh it’ll fly by.” There are days when I feel like I’ll never be finished with Peace Corps and other days when I feel like two years just won’t be long enough. Yet because it isn’t your typical nine to five job, there is plenty of free time. There is time to go for two-hour walks with a colleague; time to sit outside a storefront and greet everyone who stops by; time to play some bizarre version of checkers that I will never win at; and mostly time to just be. In America, I often had a jammed packed schedule and there was never enough time to do everything. Here in Rwanda, I will never have that (no matter how hard I seem to try).
I often find in America we emphasize that life is short, and thus we should fit as much into it as possible. We rush through our days so we can get to the next thing. But in Rwandan and probably most African cultures, there isn’t this rush or the stress of time. We like to joke about it, like is “the meeting on American time or African time?” If it’s African time make sure to be between 2-3 hours late. While this can lead to a lot of confusion and frustration to Americans living in Africa, it does teach us a lesson. Time does not have to be a point of contention in our lives; something to stress about, it can just be a sort of guidelines instead of the rule.
In summary, time is a cultural concept that can change and be adapted. Yes the clock ticks the same sixty seconds every minute, but how we perceive and view that time is up to us. We can rush through time, worrying that life is short, and that we have to hurry along to get everything in. Or maybe its better to think about it that life is long (much longer for us than most other animals) and because life is long we shouldn’t be afraid to spend our time. Rwandan culture has taught me to go for long walks, to sit and think, to share my time with others, and to not stress as much about timeliness. It’s a different culture of time, that is both frustrating and beautiful, but mostly its valuable. This perception has changed my ‘time’ here completely.