in traditional somali time it is/was measured by the daily routines and activities of the people; on prayer times which is itself was measured on the rotations of the sun-- where a stick or the side of a rock was used to tell the position of the sun(i.e. mid day, afternoon, between noon and afternoon etc) as it finally set; in the movements of the animals( the quiteessential universal example, being the rooster who crows at the break of dawn), but also goats and camels which have particular mannerism at specific junctures of the day and finally, on the rainy and dry seasons.
For many somali men and women, the so called baby boomer generation which was born either before the end of the second world war in the 1940s or in the 1950s they cannot really tell you when they were born or more accurately give you a date and month; however some can tell you the year, especially if a particular drought occur or some event, such as a tribal peace pact or conflict accompanied their birth.
This is unsurprising, since it makes a lot of sense since when you look at what is "time" other than a social construction. People chose to add hours or take hours away, state governments play around with time to save energy by curtailing working hours or store hours, good example the so called notion of " daylight saving time". In traditional societies time is not measured by numbers or years, but by "tasks". As soon as a boy can perform certian "task" like care for the animals accross vast stretches of land or be able to defend the house he was considered a man, no matter if he was 13 year olds, some would think this something very advantageous, however, as was the case whenever tribal conflict occured he would be killed, since he would be treated as an adult. For a girl as soon as she could give birth or care for children she was a woman and could be expected to be married, around 14 or 15 year old. As a man had children and grew to become an "expert" in his occupation he was considered a sort of "middle-age" individual, as signs of old age, such as "greying" occured he was seen to be in stages of wisdom and expected to become more religious and reflective on matters of living.
So the question is when we know the fact that history and politics such as the adoption of the Gregorian calendar and the hijra have played to create literily the beginning of time from time itself,
even in the Quran allah tells that he measures " time" differently than men could concieve, 1 day can be 1 thousand years
so what is 'time" and does it really exist?
