There's Time Pressure in Africa, too?

A version of this article originally appeared in the The Learning Curve and The ASTD Reporter in November, 1997.

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Was it in Africa? I thought so, but wasn't sure, so I looked it up in my dictionary. Yup, there it was, in South Africa, bordering Mozambique, Zambia, Botswana, and the country of South Africa. It would be a really long trip, but I had committed myself to going wherever there was a need.

I belonged to the Oakland (California) Sunrise Rotary club, and a couple of weeks before, I had joined an internet newsgroup of people interested in what Rotary clubs around the world are doing. One day I got the idea of doing fundraising seminars on "Taking the Pressure Out of Deadlines," and splitting the proceeds between Rotary and my consulting business, Results in No Time. So I wrote up and emailed a fundraising proposal to ROTI, the Rotary newsgroup, which had about 450 members worldwide. Within a couple of days I got email responses. The first was from Toronto, and the second from Madras, India. They both requested brochures on the seminar.

After handling the email response to Madras, I leaned back in my chair and thought, "As long as there's a need, I'll travel anywhere to help people deal with time pressures." Then I opened up another email, this one from Mike Weeden, a fellow Rotarian who was interested in my proposal. He said, "If you can handle the time pressure, come over here. While the country's economy has opened up in the past four years, a lot of things have been imported to Zimbabwe--and time pressure is among them." I started to doubt my commitment to going wherever there was a need--partly because I'm not fond of long plane flights, and partly because at the end of my trip to India a couple of years ago I got pretty sick.

Furthermore, I wasn't really sure that they had time pressures there. I never saw anything on TV about a modern "rat race" in Africa. And even if they did have problems with time, did they experience linear time as we do in the US and Northern Europe?

Three months later a bull elephant was trumpeting and charging the land rover I was in. He backed off after getting within 20 feet of us, then tried to cross the road behind us. Our guide backed up the vehicle so we could stay close to the elephant.

This was just one of many exciting incidents during my weekend at Victoria Falls, which according to some, is the largest waterfall, and one of the seven wonders of the world. The day before I had conducted a seminar at Victoria Falls for Delta Corporation's financial directors. Delta is the second largest corporation in Zimbabwe with some 13,000 employees. My trip expenses were picked up by Delta in exchange for this seminar with the directors.

I was surprised that most of the directors thought that time pressure was indeed a fact of life that we could at best ignore or tolerate. Very much in line with the way we experience time in the US and Northern Europe, they believed that pressure was built into time and deadlines, an objective fact of physical reality. The day before, in the capitol city of Harare, most of the fifty-three participants in a similar workshop said that based on their past experiences, they knew it was possible to transform a significant portion of time pressure. Did the directors perceive less opportunity for changing the pressure because their pressure was more intense? I think that the difference might also have been affected by the strong linear thinking to which they were accustomed.

Also 'in line' with the way we experience time in the US, virtually all participants in both workshops perceived time as linear, flowing along a straight line. I discovered this by doing an exercise in which I said phrases like "an hour ago," "an hour from now," "early this morning," "later this evening," "yesterday," "tomorrow," etc., giving them time to project an associated image or thought for each phrase. About 75% said that the future was perceived or felt in front of them, while the past was in the back--with past, present, and future along a line. About 25% said the future was to their right, and the past was to the left, while again past, present, and future were along a line. These findings are notable because (1) there are cultures where these results aren't found--e.g., the past is in front of a person, and (2) there is variation in the location of past, present, and future depending on the individual. Most importantly, however, doing the exercise gave people insight about where they as individuals experience past and future--insight that is essential in order to allow the restrictive structure of linear time to dissolve into the malleable nonlinear presentation of past and future in peak performance.

A couple of days later I was out in the countryside, close to the border with Mozambique, at Mother of Peace orphanage, which is where a good portion of the proceeds from my seminars during this week will go. Msasa Rotary club, to which Mike Weeden belongs, decided to help build a new dormitory for the orphanage. Most of the kids are at the orphanage because their parents died of AIDS, an epidemic in Africa. Nine of the kids are themselves HIV-positive. The orphanage is very well run, the people are very kind and friendly, and most of the kids are very lively. They followed us all around as we toured the facilities. After I played catch with one cute little girl, she became my constant companion during the rest of our visit. Before we left I got to hand each of the kids a couple of pieces of candy we had bought on our way there. As is customary for the Shona Africans, many of the older kids clapped their hands before accepting the candies. As an acknowledgement of the magnitude of the gift, both hands were used to receive the candies. The kids even sing a special song in appreciation of the gift.

Two days later a one-armed guide at Snake World has just told us about Gabon vipers. I'm looking at two vipers on the other side of the glass. The young ones--which, unlike older snakes, empty all their venom into their victim--typically kill a human within five minutes of a bite. Older ones kill within ten minutes if no antitoxic serum is available. As we leave the vipers he says there are five in there; astonished I look again to find the other three, even now scarcely visible because they look so much like leaves. Then we move on to the crocodile enclosure, where the guide says that his right arm was taken off by a croc. He said he was lucky the pond was shallow, because the croc couldn't drown him there.

The day before I had conducted another seminar in Harare at Mandel Training Centre, actually the most beautiful and well-equipped such center I've seen anywhere. Because of what I learned about the reserve of the Shona people last week--they often won't offer questions or comments unless asked directly--I was able to foster even greater participation yesterday. Their reserve, as well as the lesser reserve of the Zimbabweans with European ancestry, was understandable, given only that caning is an acceptable means of discipline in the school system, even in secondary school.

In this third seminar I taught in Zimbabwe I surveyed the fifty-four participants and found that, like those in the previous seminars, almost everyone experienced time flowing relentlessly, linearly, and at an apparently constant rate. There was a noticeable difference, however, between the Shona Africans and those of European ancestry--those with Shona blood seemed much less pressured than the Caucasians. In the seminars I presented my belief that time pressure is proportional to how separate we keep ourselves from what we're doing. Perhaps with this insight the Caucasians' pressure would diminish, and the Shonas might not fully develop the 'hurry sickness' being exported along with modern business practices and attitudes by Western countries.

Copyright © 1997 by Steve Randall, Ph.D.

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