Aotearoa Part 1: In Defense of Island Time

Three weeks later, because my laptop broke and I was busy hanging out with the aunties

Greetings all,

It has been a while since my last update because my laptop broke, and I was without a machine for about two weeks. However, we are now back in business and I have successfully completed my first transaction on TradeMe, New Zealand’s better version of facebook marketplace.

At three weeks in, I am starting to get settled in well. I have a phone number, a bank account, and a flat, and I’ll be getting a used car this weekend so I can start adventuring in earnest. Most importantly, though, I have been hanging out with aunties a lot for work, and there is no greater social safety net than aunties no matter where you go. I’ve now gone up to a marae called Matai Aranui in a town called Whirinaki three times now, where we have been hosting sessions on preserving and processing food. This was the first thing I did on my first real day here in ANZ. Talk about getting thrown in the deep end to be representing your new organization at a workshop 28 hours after arriving in the country while still jet lagged, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

While there are a lot of cultural differences between western spaces and Māori ones, a particular topic is standing out to me today that has long been something I think about, but I’ve only just started to really get my head around, and that is the perception and use of time.

Growing up in the US, one gets used to the idea that people are to be strictly punctual unless it’s a party of some sort. Being Jamaican, I know a world where that never happens. I had always been aware of this difference, and observed it as I learned more about other cultures too. Island time, CPT, IST, take your pick. I explained the concept of island time to a colleague earlier this year, and about how I run on it when I’m not at work. More on this later.

I got a more academic understanding of this in my freshman year writing seminar in college, where the professor introduced us to the concept of monochronic societies versus polychronic societies. A monochronic society is one where time is a constrained resource and hence punctuality is key, and one where tasks should be done one at a time. On the other hand, in a polychronic society time is in abundance and multiple tasks can be done at once in a non-linear fashion. As such, showing up a bit late is just part of the game sometimes.

Spoiler alert, it turns out you can add “Māori time” to the list above. In particular, Māori time has taught me a lot about how we as people use or even manipulate time. As I heard recently from a kaumātua (Māori elder), this is very well-captured in the Māori phrase “mā te wā”. While this means “see you later” as a farewell, it also translates roughly to “time will tell”. As the kaumātua explained, this way of being goes back to living in tune with nature as your timekeeper. When the time comes to do something like plant, harvest, or fish, the moon, the stars, the water, the land will tell you. As such, time in Māoridom does not follow our clocks all the time.

In a Māori hui (meeting), time does not obey agendas or time boxes in ways we are used to either. There is much more attention on the process of meeting rather than achieving an outcome from a meeting - the first order of business is to make connections to your fellow attendees and find commonalities. Reading up on the culture has taught me this, and in the meetings I have been in already, the lines between the strict work agenda and broader life are far more blurred than I have become accustomed to in my work experience thus far.

Admittedly, I had internalized the Western-centric idea that monochronic time was better and ultimately the only way to have a functional society. If not for that, how would anything function? How would meetings get done, planes leave on time, plans for a day not be spoiled? What I have learned from Te Ao Māori (the Māori world) is that a polychronic sense of time does not equate to absolute chaos, it is simply a different set of priorities and indicators of when things should be done.

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I have had many thoughts in the last year about how valuable time is, and what happens to us as humans when we are deprived of it. Of course this is very monochronic of me, but when you are working 50+ hours a week as many of us do, what choice do you have? We all have basic physical needs to meet, and when you don’t have time to exercise or cook every night you lose something. This impacts our physical wellbeing, but equally damaging is what a loss of time does to our spiritual nourishment in the broadest sense. Time spent doing things like exercising, cooking, or relaxing is not only for the sake of doing those things; they are part of who we are and what we come from. Time to cook the recipes your family has handed down for generations, time to sing or dance as part of your cultural exploration, time to spend with your family.

Losing out on this is, frankly speaking, tantamount to cultural erasure. I came to the conclusion a while ago that any workplace or space seeking to implement diversity, equity, and inclusion practices aimed at improving the experience of employees in a non-privileged group is to simply let people rest. Of course everyone will benefit from less time spent working, but for anyone who is trying to keep a culture or a tradition alive that is not reflected or is actively discouraged in their workplace’s norms, it requires extra time to take off our masks and steep ourselves back in our traditions. And frankly, this is most people. So, in effect, we are all forced into a monochronic pattern and make hard choices on what we can and cannot do if we can hope to get anything done.

Where this arc of thought has now turned because of my experiences in Te Ao Māori is how this loss of time negatively affects us in the workplace as much as outside of it. In western work culture, meetings are agenda and output driven, with “unstructured” meeting time kept to a minimum. In a Māori meeting, the process is everything and it is vital to understand how you can relate to your colleagues in the meeting and make them feel welcome and connected to trust you. If you go over your allotted number of minutes, so be it. If you just chatted over a cup of tea and didn’t even “get down to business”, great. Just come back next time.

How would anything ever get done, you might ask. Another aspect of polychronic societies is the timeframes on which we think. When we go into a meeting in a western workplace, it will be considered a failure if we walk out without having achieved our stated outputs. Have we ever considered that we can have another meeting?

Yes, it is hard to get people in a room together, particularly important and busy people. Consider, though, what gets lost in a monochronic model. The pepeha (introductions) of a Māori hui amongst people who don’t yet know each other are crucial parts of the meeting and are meant to let people connect deeply. It is not just about you, your role, and why you are there. It is also about what you come from - what region you are from, the places you call home, who your people are, who your ancestors are. You would be surprised how many connections I have already made just from these pepeha for someone who is a total newcomer to this country and this culture. This is something we are often deprived of learning about our own colleagues because the time structure often does not allow for it. Too often do we have to hold our coffee chats to a short time for fear of not “wasting time”, we compartmentalize our work selves in the name of expediency as well as for fear of lack of acceptance of the very identities that should be helping us form meaningful connections. How many times have we only made those types of personal connections with our long-time colleagues months into knowing them? And how much better is it to show up to work with them once we have built that bridge?

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That is enough rambling for now, if you have made it this far I thank you for bearing with me. Mā te wā!