1 January: Time is a suggestion
Ten years ago, I worked as interpreter and translator for asylum seekers and refugees hailing from Mali, Côte d’Ivoire, The Gambia and, occasionaly, Nigeria.
Following the script handed down from the commission, the question preceding the charged “why did you leave?” was “first name, last name, date of birth.”
January. First.
Many adventurers, siblings on the continent and grandparents have ID cards that put 1 January as their date of birth. The first few times I came across that date, I thought it was a curious coincidence. Then it became a question mark and the pleasant rarity of not seeing African births recorded as 1 January revamped the curiosity behind time and how we view it.
One day I asked my family why so many Africans had that date of birth. My mum and auntie replied, well we didn’t really record important events with a calendar. They were linked to events like a big rain or drought. So one might say “they were born when that big rain came”.
When the colonial administration arrived, they arbitrarily assigned 01/01 to their subjects.
Part of communal living and community is knowing which big rain we’re referring to and deducing time from that atmospheric event. Community is not only the interaction with other people but also with the elements who determine the passing and computus of time.
Don’t be surprised to come across Africans who, despite a non-January first DOB, don’t remember their age. It’s more than the number. It’s initiation. Different stages of life like circumcision, education, periods, marriage, parenthood, internal or external migration.
In African Muslim countries, an elder may not know how to read time on a watch, but they will know to set up a meeting after selifana (the second Muslim prayer). In Mali, Senegal, The Gambia, that prayer is almost always at the same time (2 p.m.). The question now is how much time after selifana are we meeting? But that’s part of going with the flow and the elements…or being called late.
C.P. Time. Island Time. African Time. Caribbean Time. Black People Time. Call it how you want, we take time as a suggestion and not a strict law to abide by.
Get Djeneba Deby Bagayoko’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
As African peoples, our “tardiness” precedes our name. We don’t conceive of time as a rigid construct for we are polychronic, which means we do more than one thing at a time).
I’m not going to lie. Being born and raised in the west, I found polychronicity on the continent to be on another level and it constantly tests me. When I’m in the car with my friend going from point A to B, there will be three detours, one “let me just quickly [insert activity which is never quick]”, followed by a “that’s a nice t-shirt” bargain at a shop, a few 3-minute long greetings, and sudden appetite that will make us stop at a restaurant while I’m nervously looking at my watch.
Lateness has been, however, also used as a form of resistance against the worst manifestations of capitalism: chattel slavery and colonisation.
If time is money, what better way to hurt the system than to waste time? Being late, working slowly, making mistakes that would halt production have been some of the ways in which our ancestors hurt the capitalist’s pockets.
We can’t forget music. Time or tempo is, of course, a pivotal musical element and to me Takamba is a great example of African time.
Takamba is a musical genre and a dance among the Tuareg and Songhay nations of the Sahel. As I was cruising YouTube in search of new songs to become addicted to, I read this comment:
Those African time signatures always throw me off.
It reminded me of an italian artist that replaced Tuareg musician Bombino at TEDx Bari in 2016. Before performing he talked about the difficulty he had when trying to find the tempo in the Sahelian genre.
We follow nature, its flow and rhythms.
Our time is flexible.
Our time has time.
Originally published at http://farafinna.wordpress.com on October 5, 2026.
