Western clocks begin at midnight, but Swahili time starts at sunrise. Which one feels more human to you?
I mean, time is supposed to be universal, right? Wrong. In Kiswahili, and other languages across East Africa that use the sun as the clock, even time itself refuses to be colonized.
So this one is for my fellow Kiswahili speakers. You know how when converting from western time to Kiswahili time we add or subtract 6? Like if I look at my watch and I see it’s 4 O’clock, I’ll add 6 and I’ll say ni saa kumi. Or another way of telling time when converting from western to Kiswhaili time is by using opposites on the clock, so if I look at a clock and I see it’s 5 O’Clock, I’ll see that the opposite of 5 is 11, and I’ll say ni saa kumi na moja. But why do we do this?
Well, it’s because in western time the day begins at midnight, an invisible time when most of us are asleep, but in Kiswahili, the day begins at sunrise, at around 6 am, when life for the day begins.
So in this way, Kiswahili time is offset by western time by around 6 hours. In Kiswahili time therefore, 7 am would mark the first full hour of the day, meaning the first hour since sunrise, so that’s why 7 am is saa moja asubuhi, the first hour of the morning (the first hour of the day). In western time the first hour of the day is 1 am, the first hour since midnight.
So when you’re telling the time in Kiswahili you’re basically just saying how many hours it’s been since sunrise or since sunset. For example 8 am would be saa mbili asubuhi, the second hour since sunrise, 9 am would be saa tatu asubuhi, the third hour since hour since sunrise, and so on and so forth.
image source: Almasi, Oswald, et al. Swahili Grammar for Introductory and Intermediate Levels : Sarufi ya Kiswahili cha Ngazi ya Kwanza na Kati, UPA, 2014.
And in western time (when following the 12 hour clock of am and pm) you’re just counting 1, 2, 3, 4… counting how many hours it’s been since midnight or since midday.
So in this sense, in Kiswahili and the other African languages that tell time in this way, time isn’t really about numbers, it’s about the relationship with nature. It’s about rhythm, experience, it’s embodied, and it’s alive. And of course telling time this way makes sense to us because Swahili speaking communities and other languages that tell time this way are found along the equator where we have an equal amount of day and night everyday all year round, because sunrise and sunset happens at roughly the same time everyday, around 6am and 6pm respectively. We are thus used to day and night sharing our world equally.
But here’s what fascinates me, in Europe time was standardized, colonized really, to fit the needs of industry and empire. Midnight became the starting point of the day because the clock, not bodies, dictated rhythm. So when Kiswahili and the other African languages that function the same way with time refuse that, when they insist that the day begins with the sun, it’s more than just a linguistic difference, it’s temporal disobedience.
A reminder that time isn’t neutral, it’s cultural, political, and even spiritual.
Thank you for reading!
Mumbi Macharia 
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