I grew up in New York City where “wait” is a four-letter word. Of all the challenges I faced heading into my fellowship year—the language barrier, missing friends and family, not being able to watch the NFL or my beloved Yankees—I knew one of the biggest was going to be learning to be patient when things didn’t happen in a New York Minute. Upon learning I was moving to Rwanda, the first thing that my friends and co-workers counseled me on was the need to be more patient. They said “Things won’t move quickly there,” “Deadlines won’t be deadlines,” and the like. I tried to heed their advice and steel myself for my inevitable frustration. More than halfway through my fellowship year, waiting can still get under my skin, but I’m slowly learning to wait—though not nearly as quickly as I would like.
So what have I learned about waiting in the past six months? First of all, there’s more value placed on time in Rwanda than my friends had feared. Sure, meetings don’t always start on time, but deadlines usually mean something and waiting for meetings is no more of a challenge than power outages, slow internet, or the English-Kinyarwanda language barrier. Maybe it’s because I work for a small, start-up NGO, Gardens for Health International, but waiting for things to happen at work just hasn’t been much worse than it was back in New York.
If work hasn’t involved as much waiting as many predicted, it doesn’t mean there haven’t been plenty of other sources of waiting to stress me out. The worst is probably all the waiting you have to do to eat—I’m not that pleasant to be around when I’m hungry. In New York, I can walk into a pizza place or a deli and emerge minutes later with well over 1000 calories of delicious, portable sustenance. In Rwanda, with the exception of buffets, you’re lucky if a restaurant serves you something as simple as a brochette (kebab) in less than 30 minutes. That’s without mentioning that cultural norms dictate that you don’t eat in public eliminating my old, time-saving standby of messily chomping my meals on-the-go. Suddenly, instead of taking less than 15 minutes out of my day to eat lunch, I’m looking at an hour-and-a-half.
Rwanda may not have made me forget the pure joy of fast food devoured even faster, but it certainly has made me more accepting of many types of waiting. I’ve watch my co-workers and friends wait out an afternoon downpour, learned to do it myself, and appreciated the understanding I’ve been afforded when the rain has made me late. It’s even made me question whether running down the sidewalk trying to keep oneself dry with the morning’s New York Times to avoid being late is the most logical course of action. Sometimes, slowing down a bit might be the right move.
Do I still get frustrated when things don’t move as quickly as I would like? Of course I do. The better part of a year in Rwanda isn’t going to undo a lifetime of New York, but slowly, I’m learning that sometimes waiting can be a good thing.