A running joke in Africa is that most of its people have no concept of time. I vaguely remember organizing a focus group for my PhD, set for a specific time and date, and no one showing up. ‘They are not here because they are on “African Time”,’ my Ghanaian colleague laughed. ‘Go knock on the doors of their offices, and they’ll probably come in the afternoon.’ Sure enough, they did.
Sometimes I think our view of Africans’ perception of time extends – quite unfairly –to other somewhat unrelated situations. Take the Kenya Airways flight I took to Monrovia just over a week ago from Accra. The flight arrived late from Nairobi in Accra, was delayed further in Accra, and ended up arriving in Liberia really late. As we waited to be escorted off of the plane, one man – A Brit based in East Africa somewhere, I believe – decided to speak out loud, amongst other grumbling passengers. ‘This is the last time I take this bloody airline,' he said. ‘They leave when they want and arrive when they want. Next time, I’ll go through Brussels or Amsterdam.’ But would he say the same thing today? Because boy, what a difference a week can make.
On Saturday, my Kenya Airways return flight from Monrovia to Accra (where I am currently grounded), which left about two hours late, was completely full.
And there was no one complaining about it being late.
There was no one complaining about the typically-shocking food.
There was no one complaining about Kenya Airways as an airline.
In fact, everyone seemed happy to be in the air. Because a perpetually erupting volcano in Iceland, which has grounded European travel completely, has suddenly changed many people’s perception of the airline: it is a shining star, an airline that can do no wrong. One gentleman I spoke to, who was scheduled to travel through Brussels where he was supposed to transfer on to a connecting flight to Toronto, seemed quite upbeat about the Accra-Johannesburg-Dakar-Washington DC trip, a voyage which spanned three days, he had managed to sort out as an alternative. Countless others were no doubt jubilant over taking Kenya Airways in a southeasterly direction, further away from their North American destinations, into airspace unaffected by volcanic ash, to Nairobi, linking to South Africa, and finding their way back West. Every Kenya Airways flight not going to Europe is no doubt full with experimental travellers. Maybe people are flying from Nairobi to China and trying their luck getting on a flight to Vancouver or Seattle or LAX.
Who would have thought that travelling in Africa would be so coveted? Even those who believe that Africans have no concept of time are forced to admit, for the time being at least, that Kenya Airways is not only ‘The Pride of Africa’ but the envy of the airline world.
