The Concept of Time in Togo

 This week, my cohort and I reached one full year into our service. 

Walking to the field with my friend

For me, this milestone passed as a typical day in Togo: a random stranger helping me hail a taxi off the side of the highway; sharing snacks with the driver and passengers I rode with for over two hours; buying fried tofu and boiled peanuts on the street for lunch; and enjoying an evening at my local market making rounds eating, drinking, and talking with vendors and friends. Not too shabby for my 365th day, but certainly nothing too out of the ordinary. 

As I have reached a year into my service and 15 months in Togo, I have reflected on my time here so far--all that I have learned, challenges I have overcome, new skills I have acquired, and new friendships I have formed. I have also begun to consider the time I have left here and all the things I want to achieve with my community, as well as the steps beyond Peace Corps (though it's too early to say anything...). A considerable amount of time has passed since I moved to Togo, yet a respectable amount of time remains for me to continue my work and deepen my relationships in this country. That being said, I would like to use this post to describe "time" itself in Togo and how it often feels quite different here than it does in the U.S.

While there are still 24 hours in a day, 60 minutes in an hour, and 60 seconds in a minute, time somehow seems to work on an entirely different system here. Being close to the equator, we experience about 13 hours of daylight year-round. Most of the community rises with the sun at 5:30 to begin sweeping and heading to the fields, though the Muslim community is up well before sunrise for the first call to prayer at 4:45-5:00. The night descends around 6:30 PM, but the village does not sleep, yet... While my community has electricity, there are no streetlights or lighting systems in communal spaces. Therefore, flashlights are a must when wandering around town after dark, though I have been passed by bicyclists and motorcycles without lights who seem to have superhuman abilities to see in the dark. 

Tomato transformation

During the day, the community works. Men tend to head to the fields early (6:00-6:30) to get a head start on the sun, which is out in full force by 9:00 AM, while women often tend to household chores and making breakfast before heading out to the fields themselves or tackling more time and labor-intensive tasks such as fetching water, doing laundry, collecting firewood, etc. The sun reaches its peak between 11:00-2:00, making it an appropriate time to enjoy a nap on a mat or bench in the shade. By 4:00 PM, most laborious tasks are wrapped up. People begin their (often long) treks home from the field, women begin preparing dinner, vendors prepare for the nightly market, and children head home from school or the fields depending on the season. As the sun winds down for the day, the community comes to life as people return home and often gather in public spaces to enjoy time together: eating; drinking tchouke, the local homebrew; playing soccer, or other games such as lido (basically "Sorry!") and the local version of Bacci ball; and catching up with friends. The nightly market comes to life, creating a space to find hot food, vegetables, and other basic food items and carries on until 9 PM. Afterwards, people wind down for the night, getting ready to start their day again early the next day (well, except when there's a celebration going on, but that's for a different post). 

While the daily routines and rhythms of my community feel quite different from home, it did not take long to adjust (though sometimes I still struggle with those early mornings!). People's schedules are often dictated by the sun, the weather, and the most pressing tasks required in the fields, making the hands on the clock rather arbitrary for most. As one can imagine, this is quite a cultural adjustment for someone coming from a place that rules by the clock. Here, you will not find business hours written outside a shop: it's open when the owner decides they aren't needed elsewhere, or maybe try calling the number written above the doorway... Most people don't wear watches, clocks are not found on every wall, and people only occasionally check their phones for the time. As a result, time has a knack for slipping away unnoticed here, until the position or heat of the sun becomes noticeably different. These differences have given me moments of feeling like I'm in some sort of time warp, especially when coming home from working in the fields for five hours and eating a full meal, ready to call it a day only to realize it's 11 AM! 

Visiting my neighbor's yam field

However, the greatest challenge to this new concept of time arrives when the community attempts to schedule meetings and other activities within the conventional units of time. It is not uncommon for the first attendee of a 3:00 meeting to arrive at 3:45-4:00, with the actual meeting beginning after 5:00 (I wish I was exaggerating). As a volunteer who is constantly being invited to events and trying to schedule my own meetings and group activities, this has been one of my greatest challenges. Years of sports and living with my father has made me accustomed to arriving on time. While rowing in college, my teammates and I lived by the motto, if you're not 15 minutes early, you're late, which was a must since at 4:01 PM we were often carrying the boat down to the water to start our 4:00 practice. Here, if it is an event I am invited to, I choose at what time I will arrive late to avoid being the only person there for 45 minutes. Technically, this makes me on time to being late. When it's my own meeting, I arrive on time with extra work and the expectation to be waiting awhile.

As I have had a lot of time to sit and reflect while waiting, I have often wondered why the concept of time and punctuality is so different here. While I have not come to a solid conclusion, I think the flexibility required to live in the tropics with unpredictable weather and unreliable infrastructure often must be prioritized over the discipline to arrive somewhere exactly on time. It is hard to stay on a tight schedule when so many factors in your environment are out of your control. It's even harder when people don't seem to track time closely on top of that.

While sometimes I long for an environment that values punctuality over everything else, and I can't help but wonder how much more I, and my community members, could achieve if everyone showed up on time, I appreciate the things here that are prioritized over efficiency and punctuality. Every day, people take the time to greet their neighbors, sit and chat with their friends, or stop to check in with someone they see in passing. There is rarely the feeling of being rushed through something (unless you're trying to get into a 15-passenger taxi on the side of the highway with oncoming traffic), and people work through their tasks with the faith that the work will still be there tomorrow if they don't finish today. This more laidback and flexible schedule opens people up to be more sociable and far more willing to drop whatever they're doing to lend a helping hand (which they do without fail). 

I certainly have learned to be a more patient person during my time here, and I have made an effort to be present and value the time I spend with others, rather than constantly rushing to the next task. While I do not plan to adopt the punctuality practices I have often encountered here, I do hope to carry the values of community and resting when you need it with me wherever I go after my service.

My neighbors pounding yams into fufu

Enjoying fufu with volunteers Paul and Sue