FASHIONABLY LATE!

My husband has always been the timekeeper in the house. You see I came from a home where we were mostly on time, but it wasn't really an issue, if we were late for a party, a half an hour or so, it didn't matter to us, as we were not affected. But we were always on time for school, church, most functions etc. When I met Paul, things changed a bit, I started to see his side of things. I realised that being late for anything, be it an informal invitation to someone's house, a birthday party, meeting someone at a restaurant etc, was actually extremely rude and to keep the other party waiting for you was disrespectful! Where I come from, it is quite okay to be a little late, as it is a laidback city! The joke is always, " they call Cape Town the "mother city" as it takes 9 months for anything to happen!". Well, when I arrived in Kinshasa, I realised that this is the city where everyone is Fashionably Late! Even when you attend a wedding, the invite states a time, and all the guests arrive about 3 - 4 hours later! We attended an end-of-year function last Friday, and all the guests were late, now I'm talking about 2 hours late, which makes everything late, the serving of dinner, the speeches and of course, the time that you come home! The funny thing is it is expected that most people will arrive late! And somethings will never change!