Two Moons Ago: Swahili time

Two moons ago I arrived in Tanzania. I remember just before I left Mombasa (Ukunda), I went swimming in my favorite spot on the beach, the one where there are almost no beach boys, where there is soft sand in the water and no rocks and sea urchins to step on, where there are the best waves at high tide. Full moon and high tide, waves that violently slam into your body and twirl you around like a squirrel in the mouth of a dog, except less biting.

It is a full moon right now (as I write this around the end of March), and although I have calendars everywhere that tell me I have been here two months, I'm reminded of the passing of time through the Swahili word for moon and month. "Mwezi". It is the same word.

I'm really enjoying the Swahili way of telling time.

7am is 'saa moja', 1:00, the first hour of the day. Think Biblically and you got the Swahili way of telling time. Hour one, saa mbili (2), hour three, saa nne (4) hour five, saa sita (6), time for lunch ... and so on. I have set my watch this way to help me think in Swahili more. By the time 4 or 5pm arrives, I feel like I have accomplished much because I've been up and actively doing things for 10 or 11 hours! By 7pm, it is the first hour of the night and the sun is shedding its last bit of light for the day.

If you get into more remote tribal peoples, they might tell years by counting rainy seasons. 10 seasons ago, 5 seasons ago, etc. I was reading a book by a Massai, the most well-known African traditional tribes located in Tanzania and Kenya. The author was relating his story about when he went off to boarding school. When he returned home for break, his father took a rope and tied thirty knots in the rope. He ordered his son to untie one knot every morning and when three were left, they would travel back to the school. This was back in the 70's, and life has changed rapidly even for traditional tribes like the Massai.

Right now I'm in my first rainy season. I've experienced 5 moons in Kenya and 2 here in Tanzania. As I write this, it is the 9th hour of the day, on the Thursday before Easter, the day that commemorates Jesus' institution of the Lord's Supper, our symbol of hope, forgiveness, and union / communion in Christ. In Christ. In Christ and He in us. Jesus spoke these words that very night:

“My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. ~ John 17:20-23