Somali cultural conceptualisation of time/meetings

[Riftvalley]

Do Somalis (those raised in Somalia or come to the west at an older age) generally have a relaxed cultural attitude to specific time of meetings/appointments with people?

Someone mentioned this tme the other day however I didn’t entertain it as the person was an ajnabi.

What I have personally noticed is that salah times can be used as a Reference point instead of a specific time. “After Duhr”. This can be somewhat vague and open to interpretation and it gives the person a longer window of opportunity to arrive.

I have also noticed times of mehr can be relaxed. People often book extra hours for halls as they know some people arrive late and I’ve sometimes folks can be waiting around 2 hours for the event to start. Night wedding timings can also be chaotic. I have seen some where there was a prolonged wait for the bride and groom with no one having an idea of an approximate time of arrival. I wonder if this related to our pastoral heritage where people travelled from far and wide.


Back home, I’ve noticed people seem to relax after duhr and have naps like the Mediterraneans.

 

[cunug3aad]

Somalis always arrive late the golden rule of any event

In terms of time conseptualisation i think its because in somalia its at the eqiator so all the salah times are always going to be at the same times. Likr fajr at 5 duhr at half 12 asr at like 3 to 4 magrib at half 6 and isha at half seven. And the salah times never change so they build a rigid internal clock and never build a habit of looking at a clock or watch, in somalia times are just kinda approximated with adaan and it is accurate enough for them

Also there is generally less to do back home so the day passes slower and this could affect their inability to adjust to cosmopolitan life

The difference in time management is culturally instructive. Instead of viewing it as a flaw, rather see it as a consequence of our historic relational realities.

In the post-industrial Western world, the disposability of time is constrained, which loses socio-cultural nuance. What replaced human connection is institutions and structural processes that manage and compartmentalize a person overtly in a systemic fashion, mediating information through such tractable processes, rather than a social tradition that regulated a person through the eyes of other people's wisdom, learned experience, and news that could only be mediated through hours of communication and patience. With this, you could get updates on world affairs from the other side of the world through a network of people, and receive upgrades on life strategies. That has been replaced by the news and formal education. You see? We've outsourced what was in human connection through specialized production areas. We live in an efficiency-based economic system that rewires and breaks down aspects of relational networks of humans. When you hear the elders speaking, taking their time like ents, know it is a good thing, walaal.
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This is extremely important for relational communal regularity. It's one of the cornerstones of why Islam spread fast and was maintained. Why the economic reality in the Somali peninsula was very advanced and flexible from antiquity to the pre-modern Age. Deep caravan systems worked because there were trust-based macro-networks that were built on social trust. A socio-cultural ethos born out of the social codes and constant interactions. This led to the potential of high economic scalability. Things might seem slow in the conversation, but value is not lost.

The more individualistic, task-based people get, the more we are susceptible to becoming atomized. A lot of people are objectively more systematically connected in a globalized fashion in the West but yet feel isolated.

There is a trade-off with having a fast-paced society. When I was in the homeland, it felt like time itself was going much slower, and I could soak up the day more somehow.