on time

There’s a well known, widely admitted concept, that of the “african time”. African time means, if the appointment is at, say 5, you show up at 5.30 the earliest. The play starts at 8, the audience keeps coming in till one hour later….I always thought it was because of peoples’ carelessness but today I heard another, very interesting reasoning behind it.

“For some people (= non africans) when they say 5, it has to be 5. It’s like there’s no time after five, there’s no time before 5…It’s like time is only ”on” time”

So I guess there’s time and “time” , the first being the general concept of time, the second being the time measured by the hours.  And I suppose “african time” is the first one… (unless it is carelessness…..)

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