Swahili Time – In Tanzania clocks really work differently!

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Well, this is not quite true, Tanzanians use the same clocks and watches, they only read them differently - the opposite way to be precise: The day starts at 6AM (with sun rise) and ends at 6PM (with sunset). This means 12 is 6 and 3 is 9 and so on… On first impression this is kind of annoying, but it does make sense, as life really moves with the daylight (especially with the limited availability of artificial light). We were warned to double-check, which time people are using! The tricky part is, that some Tanzanians might use ‘English time’, when talking to us, while others use ‘Swahili’ time! Confusing!
The afternoon brought us another assignment in the ‘real world’: We were all given different shopping lists and had to go to the market in town to enquire the prices of a few items and haggle and buy some others. With these we were then to cook Tanzanian recipes.

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