By Ogova Ondego
Published February 7, 2021
As you stop at traffic lights every morning on your way to work, you are likely to see a woman with a baby strapped at the back seat of her car and another child, dressed in school uniform, dozing by her side as he is being driven to school. This woman is likely to pull out a comb and start straightening her hair after which she applies lip-stick and other make-up while stalled in the traffic snarl-up that is the hallmark of Kenya’s capital, Nairobi. In the back seat of that woman’s car, too, you are likely to see a pile of papers and files she is taking to work.
John Ouko, a journalist, wakes up at 4:00 AM and foregoes breakfast so as to be at work by 6:00 AM five times every week. He shaves his beard once a week and his head is shaved bald to save himself the hustles of having to comb the hair daily. Believe it or not, Ouko brushes his teeth while running the two-kilometre stretch between his residence and the matatu terminus.
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At work, Ouko puts in 10 hours of maximum concentration. As he does this he munches a pie and washes it down with a ‘ready-to-drink’ juice or bottled water. He leaves the newsroom to meet his sources at 4:00 PM.
Exhausted, he arrives home at 10:00 night and, thanks to his dutiful wife, manages to swallow a few morsels of his favourite meal before collapsing on the seat. Dead asleep.
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On the other hand, Nyambura lectures at a medical college during the day besides visiting and attending to patients in major Nairobi hospitals and her own private clinic. She says she hardly has any time with her family as her medical career takes most of her time. She can be called any time and anywhere to attend to emergencies.
Although she is just six, the hands of Rahma Aloo, a class 1 pupil, are so full she can hardly make sense of her play time as any normal child her age should.
Picked for school at 6:00, Aloo must wake up an hour earlier and remains at school up to 4:00 PM. Arriving home an hour later, she has a few minutes to watch her favourite cartoons programme on television before being given a bath, taking a snack and then settling down to do her homework which she completes at 8:00 PM just in time for supper. She is tucked in bed at 9:00 for the ritual to continue the following day.
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Whether you are a pupil, a housewife or a career person in Nairobi Metropolitan Area, chances are you are wishing you had more time to do the numerous duties staring at you. No wonder your local mama mboga peels potatoes and chops sukuma wiki and meat for you to save you time. Perhaps nothing sums up your dilemma better than a poster that says, “Our days are so crowded. Our hours are so few … There’s so little time and so much to do.”
A story is told of an office messenger who, sensing that he was already two hours late for work, chose to run alongside his bicycle for 5 kilometres for not having time to stop and get on it!
Pressure Points: How to Survive in Your Stress-Filled World, a book by Peter Meadows, refers to today’s people as the ‘now’ generation whose functional speed is defined by the reach-me-any-time-anywhere on mobile phones and the internet.
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Meadows, however, laments that even with time-saving technological gadgets like washing machines, automated teller machines (ATMs), computers and microwave, people still do not seem to have any more time on their hands than did their ancestors who did not enjoy these ‘conveniences’.
Meadows writes that unlike the latter, modern people want to have whatever it is they want now rather than later.
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Rushed with numerous tasks and deadlines to be met, today’s people appear to be running from one thing to another.
To save time, they buy pre-cooked and pre-packed food and do internet banking and mobile money to avoid having to queue up in banking halls to pay for services like water, electricity and internet connection.
Though we eat and drink while hurtling through life like a spacecraft in the hope of saving time, we still appear to be victims rather than masters of time.
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