Dear readers,

Last week, the end of the month of October ushered in the end of day light savings time across the northern hemisphere. The change is symbolic: darkness replaces light and life is increasingly led indoors. It would be rather sadist of me to point out that over here near the equator, the sun is making its presence felt ever more strongly.

Equatorial days never grow longer or shorter as the year progresses. The sun always rises at six and starts to fade between six and seven o'clock in the evening. As a result, the Swahili concept of days and keeping time is quite different from our own. The day begins at sunset, as was the habbit in Biblical days (Jews eat their Shabbat meal on Friday rather than Saturday evening) and hours are counted from either the onset of darkness or light. So 7 o'clock am is the first hour of light and there for called saa moja (one o'clock).

This means my working day would be 0200-10.30 in swahili time, where it is 0800-1530 in our time. Needless to say this system brings about numerous isntances of utter confusement for the learner, who must always second guess which time measurement the opther speaker is using. So far, people have held up a strict segregation limiting the Swahili time system to be used only in conversation conducted in Swahili.

A handy trick in Muslim area's is using the different prayer times of islam to indicate time. One might use al-fajri, al-asiri etc to indicate what part of the day you want tot make an appointment.

While you all enjoy your extra hour of sleep, I bid you good bye, and, as usual,

Kwa heri!

D