A Typical Meeting at the Office (and there’re many)

Agreed on meeting time: 10 am – 12 noon

9:40 am: first meeting participant ambles in. We greet them, show them where the meeting will be. Karibu chai na kahawa (you’re welcome to have some tea or coffee). We go back to work a bit more.

9:55 am: second participant ambles in. Process repeats. We introduce them to the first one so they can have polite conversation.

10:00 am: still only two people, we wait.

10:10 am: two more people show up, process repeats. I’m usually antsy by this time, although everyone else seems ok with it.

10:15 am: my supervisor and I usually look at each other and say “yeah, we should start, can’t be too late.” We both amble over. I would sit down, agenda and notebook ready, hoping to get the meeting started. But, my supervisor, seeing nobody has had any tea or coffee yet, would start making his own (that’s his philosophy, you start making yours and others will feel comfortable making theirs). Add sugar. Add Nido (powdered milk). Add coffee/tea. Add water. Stir. It’s a meditative process; doesn’t exactly help my antsy-ness. Then everyone starts. And we always need more cups and some people want cold water from the dispenser than hot tea. So we run to and fro between the kitchen and meeting place to satisfy all of this.

10:25 am: finally everyone has their tea/coffee/water. We chit-chat a bit more. The rest of the participants (except one) show up. We prepare more tea/coffee/water.

10:30 am: the meeting starts.

10: 40 am: we finish introductions and going over why we are having this meeting. Remaining participant arrives, apologizing (sometimes). We go through the first 10 minutes of the meeting again. Strangely enough, people speak even more this time when asked to introduce themselves.

10:50 am: meeting finally starts and we get down to discussion.

That’s how it is and that’s how you accept it. My teacher in Uganda once told us that “you’re the one losing out if you’re not patient.” If you don’t have the patience to wait for people to come, then you’ll never get anything done. People are like this with time, and you’re not going to change that. If you storm out, angry that people don’t come at a time you said, then you can’t get the result you want. The community or whoever you’re meeting won’t really care, actually. It’s you who is losing out. I tend to agree with her. I’m this foreigner coming into a whole different culture. Who am I to demand change?