Zambian Time Perceptions Differ

12.3.24

By Tracy Blackmer, PhD

I just completed my fourth week in Zambia. My apartment is essentially stocked and functioning properly. While it’s very nice, it lacks air conditioning and allows a wide variety of insects and other things to enter.

I prefer to wake up around 2 a.m. and work on my computer when it’s cool, and free of distractions. If I leave the lights on in the different rooms after dark, the lighted rooms insects swarm and fill them after a few hours. During the day, insect incursion plummets.

Regarding my health, in my last blog post, I mentioned significant weight loss. I have stabilized my weight, and gained back a pound in the last week.

I drive around freely and can find the research farm on my own -- without getting lost. Even the police at the closest checkpoint recognize me now and often just wave me through the checkpoint without having to stop.

My language learning has not progressed as well. The fact that I am trying goes a long way with the people here, though. My failing does not seem to bother them or insult them, but rather provide comic relief for the locals. Those who I interact with seem to be fun-loving people. I am beginning to wonder if I am on a linguistic version of a snipe hunt.

Planning ahead and group communication are not strong characteristics of the rural culture. Trying to plan beyond the next day usually leads to chaos. Planning a week ahead is futile from a scheduling perspective. However, the locals are extremely effective at short-term reactions and mobilization and could get 50-100 people together on with one day’s notice.

Time Perceptions

Time management and efficiency are not strengths. If (when) locals show up for a task or meeting two hours late, they genuinely don’t understand that means another meeting or task may be disrupted. The statement “I am leaving now,” shouldn’t be taken literally here. I have grown increasingly pointed in my discussions that timeliness is important, because it impacts the results we may see during my short time here.

Many times, a simple phone call to a partner or vendor would suffice, but I see a strong cultural preference to go to town and talk face-to-face. This often results in arriving to find the vendor is not present, calling the person and waiting for him or her to arrive. But along the way, you stop and incidentally talk to many other people, making what could be handled with a two-minute phone call a three-hour trip.

I am surprised that everyone seems concerned that I should wash my vehicle. Most days, I drive through field roads that have puddles which results in mud splashing on the side of the vehicle. Usually this means it is a little muddy, not something resulting from mudbogging. I sense they are embarrassed for me that I don’t wash it each day. This would entail driving to town and waiting for someone to hand wash it and only pay about $2-$3 U.S. My opinion is, I don’t want to make an extra trip to town and lose an hour or more of time to wash a car that will become muddy again the next morning. A couple weeks ago someone wanted to take it town and wash it for me. The person was gone five hours, because there was a line at the car wash, and couldn’t understand why I was upset that I couldn’t use it for other errands that day.  I have noticed that few vehicles are muddy here, but I think that is because most vehicles don’t run on field roads. It’s just another cultural difference.

The field training and work are progressing very well, largely because we established a fairly rigid schedule that everyone follows. Trying to branch out to involve other potential partners and organizations is very complicated, because of the planning challenges. Ordering items that are beyond a simple purchase on the spot is difficult. The default solution seems to be to drive somewhere else to purchase a product immediately, rather than call a store, and order it for delivery.

The closest town of Petauke has a population base of about 15,000. The next largest city is Chipata, located about 100 miles away, and has a population base of about 250,000 people. The capital city, Lusaka, is about a 6 1/2-hour drive away and has about 3.3 million people. Zambia has few roads, but main roads connect the cities. A busing system also acts as a package delivery system. People order items from other cities and have them delivered to a local bus stop. Bus stop staff calls when a package arrives. Depending upon how you order, a package from Lusaka could arrive the next day, or two weeks later.

Now that the rainy season is nearing and the scouts have some basic training, we are beginning to plan for some of the other projects. The scouts are anxious to learn more and do any task without complaint. The planting season here is based on a combination of projected rainfall and temperature patterns. The 20-year rainfall averages for this area are eight inches or more for the month of December. That makes it a good time to start. The average daily high for temperature for November is 88 degrees, but temperatures will drop to a high of 77 degrees from January through March, which is grain fill time.

The current temperature forecast calls for a daily high of 97 degrees for Wednesday through Saturday of this week. We set a target that we want all our grower fields planted by the Dec. 15. We spent a couple of hours talking about the tradeoffs of planting too early or too late (mostly what happens if it doesn’t rain).

Families, communities help

For this project, we are working with 10 growers from each of five villages planting about 2 1/2 acres. The group decided that the best strategy was to do group plantings. The scouts and local leaders will divide up by village. In each village, the farmers and scouts would all plant one field together at a time and then move to the next until all 10 fields are planted.

Unlike American culture, this entails not only the lead farmers, but also their families – even extended families to a degree, to help. This is great in that it allows the scouts to work with the growers on every field, and assures all the practices are done correctly. It further ensures all the inputs are, in fact, used on the assigned field.

Our initial time estimates for each task gives us an estimate of about 40 hours to strip till, seed, and apply fertilizer on the 2 1/2 acres. The realities of coordination, timeliness and efficiency probably mean closer to 80 hours are needed at first. It is possible that moving from one field to another could take one, or possibly two, hours. Further complicating the logistical realities is that the current temperature 97-degree forecast I mentioned earlier. Workers will start between 5 a.m. and 6 a.m. each day, but will likely stop field work by early afternoon because of the heat. Considering the difficulties of moving between fields for most villagers, it is not practical to come back for a few hours in the evening.

In summary, what we call the inputs project is now in full swing. We have trained 20 scouts as trainers on the new methods of planting maize and they are now in full force, actively transferring this training into practice to 50 additional farm families on more than 100 acres.

We have been able to disrupt a lot of the inefficient farming practices associated with hill planting and reduce the tillage and potential erosion loss. These fields will be monitored every two weeks to identify problems and react quickly. I find myself increasingly talking with other ag information sources and reacting to the misinformation that seems all too prevalent here. I could not be happier with the progress and impact we have already made for bringing sound agronomic practices into play here, so the people in this part of Zambia can have true self-sustaining systems.