Obruni in Ghana

You know, it’s Africa time… Without any offence, let me give you some advice. If you are meeting a Ghanaian and the meeting is at 10, tell him/her that the meeting is at 9. Chances are that you (after getting there really at 10) will wait for only about 30 minutes. I’m giving you a piece of advice that I myself don’t really follow. I feel mean when I do that and I kind of always hope that THIS TIME, they’ll really be there on time. Well, usually not…

“I’ll be late” is relative as is “a short while” (well, my ex-boyfriend used to ask me “your short while, or mine?” :-)). When I send a message to someone apologizing for being late, I’m about 15 minutes late. When a Ghanaian tells you “I’ll be a little late”, it probably means at least 30 minutes. When a Ghanaian says “I’ll be there in a bit”, you should here “I’ll be there in 30 minutes”. When they say “I’m leaving right now,” you should hear “I’m leaving in about 20 minutes, maybe.”

I’d like to say – you’ll get used to it, but it’s not really so much true for me. While I’m not the most punctual person in the world, I’m not patient enough to wait for someone for an hour and a half. I wish I was, I’m working on it, but there’s a combination that is killing me. Getting up early for a meeting AND ending up waiting for more than an hour. I like my sleep. I hate getting up. And in such situations, all I can think of is – you just took my sleep away from me for no reason! The funny thing is, though, that I just don’t start showing up late. Because – what if this time, the person is actually going to be there on time? Naïve… I know. :-)