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Aug 13, 2018
Swahili Time
Kenya and Uganda both lie on the equator, so the sun rises around 6 a.m. and sets around 6 p.m. throughout the year. Given such a reliable natural timekeeper, it’s customary to reckon time by counting hours of light or hours of darkness: 7 a.m. is called 1 o’clock (saa moja, or one hour of light), and 11 a.m. is called 5 o’clock (saa tano) (moja means 1 and tano 5 in Swahili). Similarly, 7 p.m. is called 1 o’clock (one hour of darkness), and 11 p.m. is 5 o’clock.
Confusingly for newcomers, clocks themselves are set to Western time, but they’re read aloud in “Swahili time.” Increasingly, though, Africans are simply conforming to Western conventions.
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Kristján reads the internet. Some of it, he repeats here.
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