When is Late Too Late?  Examining Time Keeping Culture in North Cyprus

‘Mañana, mañana’ has much the same meaning (not literal translation, I know) as ‘yavas, yavas’ or even ‘yarin, yarin’ which all of us expats living in North Cyprus are very familiar with.  In fact, if you’re buying property here your builder will introduce you to the terminology and demonstrate the concept very early on!

Basically it means, ‘you’ll see me when you see me’ or ‘it’ll be done when I can be bothered’ and because the pace of life here is laid back and far less frenetic than most of us are used to coming from the UK, Germany or the US for example, we learn to accept it and love it - but when is ‘late’ too late?  Let’s examine time keeping culture in North Cyprus.

In the case of my dog 30 seconds is too late: - I make my dog Cheese wear a muzzle when I walk him because on our favourite walking route poison is regularly put down on anything from goat’s intestines to the bare ground that we walk upon, and because my baby is a regular canine hoover with selective hearing, the only chance I get to protect him from the poison is with a muzzle. 

However – along our favourite walking route at the moment in the stunning Cyprus springtime there are also lots and lots of long grasses and wild and wonderful flowers. 

Now, my Fromage friend is a clever chap who manages to wedge said greenery between the mesh of his muzzle and nibble upon it.  When he has done so a mere ‘30 seconds late’ can actually be too late because no sooner has he ingested said greenery than it is coming right back at you in the form of puke. 

So, if I am too late in removing it the muzzle fills with modged up grass and I have to soak it in a bucket and wash my dog’s mouth out as well.

In the case of a visit to Layle I’d say 20 minutes is too late: - The other day I had an 11 o’clock appointment with Layle who only lives 15 minutes down the road, so I set off in plenty of time and decided to avoid slow moving construction lorries (don’t you just despise their very presence in North Cyprus…but then without them I guess I wouldn’t have a home) – anyway, yes, so I thought I’d take a diversion through the back roads from Karsiyaka to Lapta and imagine my surprise when a while later I am totally tangled up in the labyrinth of Lapta’s back streets.  It turns out I drove past the bottom of Layle’s road half a dozen times but could I find her house?  Could I heckerslike – and what’s more, could I find my way out of Lapta?  No…I had to go all the way back to Karsiyaka and start again and I arrived a good twenty minutes late with steam coming out of my ears…on that day, ‘20 minutes late’ was really too late seeing as she lives so close!

If we’re talking about a water delivery then we’re talking about 1 day being too late: - Despite the lovely contract I signed to buy my beautiful home that had strict stipulations about water supplies and the like, I still have no water connection and am forced to call the Su Guy every once in a while and order water.  Now, the first few times of doing this were very stressful – he speaks no English and at the time I spoke pretty much NO Turkish whatsoever, I was unable to explain who I was, where I lived and what I wanted and everything got lost even before translation…so one night I get home, having called the Su Guy early that morning and explained that my tank was empty, I get in the shower and soap up from head to toe and a strange straining sound comes out of the taps after a bit instead of water, and I am left standing there screaming at the top of my voice because I have run out of water.  Fair play, my husband soon got on the phone to a man who could speak to the Su Guy in Turkish but sadly he couldn’t now come until the next day.  So in the case of a water delivery ‘1 day is too late’.  I was forced to wrap a towel round myself and wander over to a neighbour and borrow their shower…how humiliating…mind you, meant we ate out that night as I had no water for washing up.

In the middle of winter when you’re freezing your butt off and the central heating is whirring away to counteract the cold, 1 week is too late when you’re very low on gas: - and that’s just what happened back in January when I called JetGaz and they said our man’ll be up your end of the island on Thursday but he turned up a week later because he was just so busy – I froze, the dog froze, we had no hot water and I would generally have bitched and moaned about it to everyone had I not been the only one on the estate with central heating that actually works – thanks to Warmlife Dave – tee hee.

But – to be honest all of these examples of ‘late being too late’ pale into insignificance when you consider this – yesterday, fourteen months after installing it and twelve months after me making repeated and concerted efforts to get him to come and service it, my generator guy turned up to service my generator for the very first time

Yes.

Cue tumbleweed…

Well, funnily enough I had actually managed to find someone else in that short space of time who has actually been and serviced it and gently cared for it at least three times…oddly enough the generator guy was surprised to hear this and even more surprised when I told him to go away and never darken my doors again. 

So, the moral of the story and answer to the question is – you can be late in Cyprus and get away with it by saying ‘yavas, yavas’ ‘yarin, yarin’ or even ‘Mañana, mañana’ – but if you turn up over a year after your appointment, that could just be conceived as TOO LATE – got it?  Good!