Queues

I’ve been meaning to write for a while now and now I’ve eventually got around to it. I suppose since I only have 5 blog followers (2 of which are people I’ve never met and two of which are my parents...) it’s not really that  much of an issue.

I wanted to write about my theory of “queues.” I had this realisation about the Western-ness of queues whilst at Adventure City (or Adventure World, I can never get it right) Lusaka’s Water Park complete with super-fast red water slide, long mellow cruisey blue slide, various swimming pools and kiddie slides and more attention than a ‘mzungu’ in her swimming costume would care to deal with. Oh what it is to be exotic.

Anyway, I was standing at the top of the slide, watching a bit, I didn’t really want to go down the slide just yet, I was content to just stand for a while. There was a crew of young men waiting next to the slide as various people came up the stairs and went down the slide. There didn’t seem to be much of an order going on but after watching for a while, there definitely seemed to be some kind of understanding about who could go and when and why. So I came to the following conclusion: in the ‘Western’ world (used loosely, but you know what I mean) the quasi-sacred Queue functions under the belief that the best way to maintain order and distribute or allow access to something, when there are many people who desire it simultaneously, is on a first-come-first-serve basis. This system is regulated by the physical structure of a queue (a line formation) and corrects any stepping out of this physical line (from a polite ‘ahem’ to an ‘Excuuuse me, but there is a queue’).

The more African approach that I observed at the slides centred around need and a bit of resourcefulness. It was regulated by the faith that those wronged would speak up, and those in the wrong would accept being told off. What it seemed like was happening, not just ‘pushingin,’ but rather that there was an unspoken mutual understanding (just like the physical line of people that form a queue are in an unspoken agreement to stand in this way) that mostly, one waits in the general order that one got there but that one may go straight to the front, to the source of the goods or service, provided that one was in greater need (e.g. perhaps in an obvious hurry when others weren’t, or in a greater state of excitement about going down the twisty blue slide) or took a greater amount of initiative to do so. I also think that the understanding extends to include the regulating factor: if someone takes advantage of this arrangement, the others as a group will speak up and set him right.

Neither is perfect, in its most basic form, the former relies on a single unviolable concept: the Queue. It means that there is an easier way to manage a range of situations but on the down side it doesn’t allow for the specifics of a situation or accommodate special needs. The latter is more fluid and can thus be adjusted based on the situation and can be moderated democratically. However, if there are inequalities amongst those present (for example the kids sometimes had to wait longer before they could go down the slide because young adults would go in front of them) then it is not always possible for the situation to be fairly regulated. Just an interesting observation I thought.