In the western world everything functions around time, and specifically how we measure it. Minutes, hours, days, weeks dictate our livelihoods, our function revolving around the constraints of the 24 hour clock. It is then easy to assume that it has always been like this and the 24 hour day applies to every culture, but that is not the case.
A good example of a non-linear perception of time is the African conception of time, where in the pre-colonial period Africans would pertain their measurement of time to significant events in the day, usually to do with cattle.
“To these people, cattle is the ultimate thing when quantifying wealth. Therefore the day is reckoned in reference to events pertaining to cattle:
6 am – Milking time
12 noon- Time for cattle and people to rest
2pm – The time for cattle to drink water
5pm – The time when cattle return home” (Babalola and Akolan, p.144)
(African Concept of Time, a Socio-Cultural Reality in the Process
of Change, Sunday Fumilola Babalola* and Olusegun Ayodeji Alokan Ph.D
Journal of Education and Practice www.iiste.org
ISSN 2222-1735 (Paper) ISSN 2222-288X (Online)
Vol.4, No.7, 2013)
John Mbiti, a professor of African philosophy, discussed time in this period for the Africans as being intrinsically linked to their religious and philosophical beliefs. In his book ‘African Religion and Philosophy’, he writes that the linear notion of a past, present and future didn’t really exist for these people. Instead, Mbiti uses the Swahili words ‘Sisa’ and ‘Zamani’, essentially reflecting a ‘micro’ and ‘macro’ time respectively.
Sisa and Zamani operate as their own time dimensions. Sisa has a sense of immediacy and newness, reflecting the actuality of ‘where’ and ‘when’ you exist. There is a past, present and future but they are all contained with events that can be recollected or are about to be experienced.
“Sisa is in itself a complete or full
time dimension, with its own short future, a dynamic present and an experienced past.” (Babalola and Akolan, p.145)
Zamani relates to a ‘macro’ time, and an event has to be realised in the Sisa dimension before it can be incorporated into the Zamani dimension, the Sisa event essentially moves backwards into the Zamani. Zamani is ‘the graveyard of time’, a place beyond which nothing can go, a period of termination.
With this in mind, linear time was an alien concept to these people, time had to be experienced to be perceived as time, as opposed to the numerical order that governs every day now, pretty much across the whole world.
I think this relates to the idea of cycles quite nicely, because instead of time being a straight line that pierces through life, it was seen as a dimension in itself that was separate from life. Still, there was a cycle – the sun rising, herding cattle etc. It is interesting to me that time can be viewed differently, and whilst time is the ultimate dictator in the modern day, adopting an alternative perception of what time is can allow for building a relationship with the self. What I mean is that there is the potential to separate the idea of self from the governance of time, as time is its own entity which has ultimately been categorised by the western world.
Mbiti John, (1969), African Religion and Philosophy, London: Heinemann.
(African Concept of Time, a Socio-Cultural Reality in the Process
of Change, Sunday Fumilola Babalola* and Olusegun Ayodeji Alokan Ph.D Journal of Education and Practice www.iiste.org
ISSN 2222-1735 (Paper) ISSN 2222-288X (Online)
Vol.4, No.7, 2013) (https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/234634253.pdf)