What time is it?

I’m not a person known for having a fantastic sense of time. I usually get where I need to be, pretty much when I need to be there, but keeping track of time is something that requires my conscious effort.

In Zanzibar, I’m learning about time all over again. I’m not just talking about “Swahili time” (although I have on several occasions arrived punctually for public events, only to find that the event in question wouldn’t actually start until 40 minutes later). I’m talking about the fact that the day in Kiswahili officially is marked at sunrise (at around 6 AM, year round) and ends at sunset (at around 6 PM). So a meeting that might begin at, say, “8 AM” would be said here to begin “saa mbili asubuhi” (or at 2 in the morning).

Most of the time, when people are speaking in English, they give the English time, and in Kiswahili, Kiswahili time, so even though there is potential for constant confusion, we’ve only had one mishap with time since we’ve been here. Clocks here are mostly in English time, but it’s smart when looking at an unfamiliar clock to keep in mind the rough time you think it is—if the clock is off by 6 hours, it’s in Kiswahili time; if it’s way off, then it’s probably broken.

But every once in a while, I’m really confused, like today. This afternoon, before I made my usual Sunday afternoon/morning Skype call to my parents (on East Coast time, 7 hours behind us), I logged on to Facebook and noticed that a friend’s status reported that he was looking forward to an extra hour of sleep. A moment of panic—I hadn’t even thought about the time changing. What time is it? Do we spring forward or fall back? What season is it?

As it turns out, my Facebook friend is in London, where the time shift happens a week earlier than in the U.S. But in the process of thinking about this, I figured out why the math never works out for the time difference between Zanzibar (Greenwich Mean Time +3) and Tacoma (Greenwich Mean Time – 8), which should be 11 hours but has been only 10 when I’ve compared notes. Daylight savings time!! Zanzibar doesn’t change time, there being little point so close to the equator.

So although I’m miffed at the Brits today for disrupting my feeling of continuity with GMT, I’m excited about next week, when the math will be more predictable. What time is it? Look at your watch; if speaking in Kiswahili, subtract 6; if speaking on Skype, subtract 8 or 11 (next week). And be punctual, whatever that means.