Daylight Savings Time

Morocco just recently sprang forward an hour, which, aside from ruining my sleep the following morning, has been one of the most amazing cultural experiences of my service.

I’ve heard competing explanations as to why the kingdom felt this necessary. The one I like the best has to do with making our time more parallel with that of France for the ease of summer tourists. It’s also one of the best ways – if done correctly – for a society to conserve energy. Regardless, the sun now rises a little later in the morning and sets at almost nine in the evening, and I’m a lot more willing to run with the girls from the women’s association in the morning and to toss the frisbee with my English students at the Dar Shebab in the evening.

In all other ways, however, this time change has been the most stressful event I’ve dealt with since I got over my bone-itis. You see, the government, television channels, business professionals, organizations, Peace Corps volunteers, and other civically-minded individuals have added an hour to their watches; everyone else hasn’t. As a result, we have the conundrum of “New Time” and “Old Time.”

“New Time” is a reference to the current official time (as of this month), whereas “Old Time” quite naturally refers to what the time would have been if the clocks had not been changed. This commonly arises in conversation in the following manner: “Let’s meet at 6:30 to talk about how to solve all of the community’s problems.” “Great. New Time or Old Time?”

There are two problems, however, with the concept of new and old times, aside from its inherent ridiculousness. First, to be able to conceptualize “Old Time,” you have to be aware of the existence of “new time.” This creates a situation similar to that of the proactive employee who sets the clock in his car ahead 15 minutes so as to always be on time, but, because he knows that he really has an additional quarter of an hour (and thus really works from 9:15 – 5:15 and is early if he gets to work at 9:00), defeats himself and still arrives late. It would only make sense if he didn’t know about the time change, consequently not knowing about “New Time,” and, as a result, he’ll always show up an hour late.

Which brings us to the second problem. In practice, it doesn’t really matter if you say “New Time” or “Old Time;” it’s just as likely that they won’t show up all. This could be that New Time is more conducive to playing outside and enjoying yourself, as is the current weather, but my experience is that a meeting set in New Time is going to result in a non-event at either the time appointed or an hour later.

And this is the way I imagine it's going to be for the next two months, until the beginning of Ramadan when the clock is changed back (no one wants to wait until a 9 o'clock sunset to eat). Maybe then we'll have "New Old Time" and "Old New Time." That'll make it easy to get things done.