I am coming to the end of this stage of work in the city, and so I am reflecting on my experiences of the interviews and meetings of the last five weeks or so. I have been having meetings in a number of places: various government ministries, NGOs of all hues, international aid agencies, embassies and with individuals. One of the most striking things is that all these people appear to live in different time zones, depending on their occupation.

For example, meeting Dominican civil servants (who are never particularly civil) are people who work very much on la hora Dominicana (Dominican time). I arranged a meeting with someone at the environment ministry, scheduled it for 10 AM. I arrived at 9:55, all prepared and ready, only for the interviewee to turn up at 11:45, without so much as an apology for being late. I soon became used to Dominican time, and incorporated it into my working day. It is perfectly reasonable here to schedule a meeting a full hour before when you want it, knowing that people will generally turn up around an hour late. Most Dominicans appear to live in a time zone about 1 hour behind GMT (Gringo Mean Time). I have a suspicion that the same social trend observed in the lecture I went to applies here - that the later you turn up, and the more disdain that you give to people who expect you to turn up on time or at least apologise for being late, the greater the sense of superiority and importance that you exude. Perhaps a bunch of anthropologists would get excited by the social power things, and would start talking about Bordieau and such like, but anthropologists are a funny breed, and have a unpleasant tendancy to do things like that.

The problem with this is that I have a lot of meetings with foreigners and with Dominicans working at foriegn NGOs and aid agencies. In the DR, if you want someone to turn up within about half an hour of the scheduled time, you say a la hora Americana - American time. My own practice when meeting Dominicans who work for foreign organisations is to think that they have become half-gringoed, and so I expect them to turn up 40 minutes late. With foreigners who live here, I make a calculation on how long they have lived here, and how aplatanado they have become. For someone new to the country, I expect them on time, but for someone who has lived here for ten years, I expect them to be half an hour late.

Yesterday, I suddenly had to think in European time. I had a 10AM meeting with a German aid agency. I made sure I turned up at 9:55, and lo and behold, my German interviewee walked through the meeting room door at 9:59:59. He may have lived here for years, but there is something in the German psyche that prevents them from being aplatanado with regards to time keeping, no matter how long they may have lived here. I wonder how frustrated he must be with Dominican time keeping.

To my dilemna: I have scheduled a meeting for 9AM on sunday morning with an academic. I know that the interviewee is a foreigner, but has lived here for long enough to become semi-aplatanado. She is an academic (a geographer!!!!), and works for the state university here. Therefore my calculation as to what time I should actually turn up at is thus:
9AM sunday morning
-add 30 mins for being a sunday morning
-take away 10 mins for being a foreigner (she is French)
-add 30 mins for being semi-aplatanado
-add 15 mins for being an academic
-add 30 mins for being a state employee
I therefore calculate that I should turn up at 10:35. Sounds perfectly reasonable. I will let you know later how accurate this was, or whether she answered the door in her dressing gown.

I think I should create a website that does calculations like this, to work out the exact delay between the time-keeping of different Dominicans and Gringo Mean Time.