Cameroonians sense of time is almost non-existent and I am envious of this culture difference in some ways. Our culture just doesn’t allow for us to be in such a slow pace. One of our directors explained it like this; a Cameroonian’s mindset is that they always have time for everything; there is always plenty of time. Francis clarified this for me one day when I asked him what he was going to do tomorrow. He replied, “Ahhh nuting really, I sleep, I play futbol, I go back to sleep, I have nuting but time, time is on my side.” I was cracking up as he told me this because we just had the diversity class in training that day where our director told us about their attitudes toward time. He is Cameroonian himself and it was interesting to hear his perception of us. He exclaimed, “Where are you all rushing too all the time? You are always in a hurry.”  It is something that I have started to pay attention to because I noticed when I walk along the cornfield trails or roads I am always catching up with people and passing them. As I come up behind them I feel I may make them uncomfortable by coming up so fast on them, so now I keep telling myself to slowwwwwwww down, time is on my side.

The down side of this perception of time is that it isn’t very cohesive in an American business sense. If you are told to be somewhere at seven in America, you are there at seven or you could lose the account, get fired from your job, or at best to be reprimanded with out termination. We have been assigned to a local company here in Bafia, which we will work with while here in training over the next few months. This has been one of the more stressful situations I have been thrown into thus far. I’ve been assigned to a local hotel, Rim Touristique, who I am supposed to meet with once a week, observe, and give recommendations on business improvements. I am supposed to do this when I can barely communicate in French and the people at the hotel know zero English. The first time I met with the owner it was one of the most painful situations I have ever dealt with on my own.  A lot of awkward silence, me scrambling through my French dictionary and French notes I jotted down before the meeting, stumbling through a mixture of French, English, and Spanish, just trying to get anything to come out in a way that he understands. It was absolutely brutal, but one thing I got out of it was that he did want another meeting, so I took that as the one positive accomplishment, and that it in no way shape or form could it go any worse than it did that day. I was to meet him on Saturday at 1:00 pm, but ahhhh its Cameroon time, so of course he didn’t show up until 2:00 pm. After an hour of waiting for him, then I got to sweat through more awkward silence and him mumbling under his breath about how I don’t comprehend anything he is saying. I may not comprehend too much of his French, but I did get that part. 

Round three was today for meeting with him and I accomplished nothing the first two times except for learning to deal with awkward silence. While at school I sweated the approaching meeting but tried to prepare some questions I wanted to ask about his business and got one of the language trainers to help translate them into French for me. What a relief today, I finally bridged the gap with him, joked around a bit and came up with the idea of creating a brochure for the hotel. He showed me all the amenities of the hotel and what important things he wanted included in the brochure, while not forgetting to remind me every few minutes that this needed to be in French when I gave it to him. I kept replying, “Yes Mr. Rim it will be in French by the time it gets back to you.” I chalked the day up for a win in my column because we actually had some two-way communication in French and it ended with him offering me a beer after I was done taking the tour and scribbling notes down.  Anything I couldn’t understand I got him to write in my notepad and I’ll get assistance on translating later. I am looking forward to creating the brochure for him and I am not hesitant in having my weekly Tuesday meeting any more. We have been told it is going to be hard to gain the trust of the locals and this definitely proved to be true, but once it turned around in my favor it was certainly gratifying.

Sit back, slow down, and roll with the punches.  A win is a win.