The Strange Things Africans Do

So here's a confusing post about time. Recently I learnt that all of East Africa reads time differently when spoken in their native language. If you want someone to meet you at 4pm you would tell them 10pm Lutorro time (which is the native language spoken in Fort Portal) or say 4pm muzungu (white person) time. It's confusing. Basically they read the opposite hour on the clock, so 3 is 9, 2 is 8, 1 is 7.. etc. We learnt this because last Thursday at school the kids were asked to come to class the next day at 10am. Then Friday about 3/15 kids showed up to class at 10am. We asked the kids where everyone else was and they told us, "You said 10am! That means 4am Lutorro time!" Well obviously class at 4am is kinda ridiculous... but I guess kids being kids they wanted to skip out of class and used our mistake as a reason. Luckily one of the teachers knew where most of the kids lived so we were able to round up a full class before 11am. Moral of the story: When speaking to an African about time, specify whether you're talking in African or muzungu time.

They also count numbers completely different on their hands from us... But I'll save that for next time on, The Strange Things Africans Do.