{"id":21119,"date":"2019-01-31T12:49:26","date_gmt":"2019-01-31T20:49:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=21119"},"modified":"2019-01-31T12:49:26","modified_gmt":"2019-01-31T20:49:26","slug":"nica-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/nica-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Nica Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cAnd one more thing,\u201d proclaimed Carla, our native Nicaraguan chaperone for the week, \u201cyou might as well put your watches away while you are here.\u00a0 You\u2019re used to American time, but while you\u2019re with us, you will be on Nica time.\u00a0 Trust me, just roll with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was my first time to Nicaragua, leading a group of young adults on a service trip for nine days to a village called Ticuantepe.\u00a0 We had no running water, limited electricity, and even less privacy.\u00a0 Carla, who had been leading groups like this for over six years, was well versed in helping\u00a0 American \u2018mission workers\u2019 adjust to life in a developing world country and her comment about Nica time was very sage.\u00a0 We were tasked with creating an eight foot by eight foot structure that would become the home of a family we served alongside with over the course of about five days.\u00a0 Most Americans would be used to a schedule with tasks that would need to be completed each day, checking off each finished task throughout the project.\u00a0 But we quickly learned that supplies wouldn\u2019t always be available right when we needed them.\u00a0 It may rain at the exact time we were supposed to start mixing cement and laying another two levels of bricks.\u00a0 The road to the work site may be unexpectedly blocked.\u00a0 We all had to learn to adapt to the realities of a different culture and it was a very good lesson for each of us.<\/p>\n

This theory of \u201cflexible time\u201d is described in great detail in the eighth section of Erin Meyer\u2019s The Culture Map, <\/em>a best-selling work on the complexities of cross cultural communication, and the necessity to base ones \u201cexpectations accordingly.\u201d[i]<\/a>\u00a0 An excellent graph of the cultural differences of time is shown below.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As the graph demonstrates, on one extreme are the exceedingly precise Germans and Swiss.\u00a0 When someone in these cultures says a meeting is at ten, the meeting begins at ten sharp!\u00a0 Perhaps this is why they make such famous watches, clocks and time pieces.\u00a0 \u00a0Americans fall relatively close to this more precise end of the spectrum.\u00a0 However, you can see that Latin American countries, such as Nicaragua, tend to be more flexible with their understanding of time.\u00a0 I certainly experienced this on my trip.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, when it comes to climate change, it is often these countries that are the most flexible with time, that have the least amount of it left before catastrophic damage occurs to their lands.\u00a0 As numerous studies have shown, it will be the lands in Latin America, numerous Island Nations and the coastal countries of Africa that will first be impacted by rising seas. [ii]<\/a> Many of these countries are considered \u201cdeveloping nations\u201d which indicates that the world\u2019s poorest nations will be impacted first.[iii]<\/a><\/p>\n

Last week, as leaders of the countries that tend to appear on the other end of the time spectrum, the one where time is more precise, met in Davos at the World Economic Forum, they were greeted by a stark message from sixteen year old Greta Thunberg, urging them to immediate action to combat climate change by proclaiming \u201cour house is on fire.\u201d[iv]<\/a>\u00a0 May these world financial leaders heed Thunberg\u2019s call, and realize that just like their own cultural inflexibility with time, in relation to the global climate, there is not a second to waste.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[i]<\/a> Meyer, Erin. The Culture Map: Decoding How People Think, Lead, and Get Things Done Across Cultures<\/em>. New York, NY: Public Affairs, 2015, 225.<\/p>\n

[ii]<\/a> Quirin Scheirmeier, \u201cClear sings of global warming will hit poor countries first,\u201d Nature<\/em>, April 20, 2018. https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/d41586-018-04854-2<\/a><\/p>\n

[iii]<\/a> Suzanne Goldenberg, \u201cClimate Change: The poor will suffer most,\u201d The Guardian<\/em>, March 30, 2014. https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/environment\/2014\/mar\/31\/climate-change-poor-suffer-most-un-report<\/a><\/p>\n

[iv]<\/a> Greta Thunberg, \u201cOur house is on fire,\u201d The Guardian<\/em>, January25, 2019. https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/environment\/2019\/jan\/25\/our-house-is-on-fire-greta-thunberg16-urges-leaders-to-act-on-climate<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cAnd one more thing,\u201d proclaimed Carla, our native Nicaraguan chaperone for the week, \u201cyou might as well put your watches away while you are here.\u00a0 You\u2019re used to American time, but while you\u2019re with us, you will be on Nica time.\u00a0 Trust me, just roll with it.\u201d It was my first time to Nicaragua, leading […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":108,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1340,1322,1429],"class_list":["post-21119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dminlgp-9","tag-lgp9","tag-meyer","cohort-lgp9"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/108"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21119"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21123,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21119\/revisions\/21123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}