This art of office hospitality

If there is something we Africans have learnt, it is the art of visiting. We love to visit others, and many times we find ourselves playing the host. In fact, there are many whose weekends are spent exchanging visits, pre-visits to plan particular visits of great importance and post-visits to look back at successful visits and relax.

There is nothing simple about visiting, I must tell you. The host must provide refreshment for the visitors and possibly accommodation if they have come from far. (Hotels do not apply as accommodation, unless you come from one of those tribes that believe your mother-in-law can never sleep under your roof or vice-versa). Visitors too, must come with ‘something’. Where I come from, fruits, milk, bread, live chicken or soda and many many, ‘etc’ are acceptable forms of ‘something’.

Now, perhaps what we haven’t completely mastered is the art of discerning in which situations NOT to pay a visit, or to keep a visit as brief as possible. I work in an open-plan office (accommodating 11 people) and privacy is non- existent here.

One of my colleagues recently received a visit from a client, an elderly gentleman. Unfortunately, nobody alerted him that this client was on the way. He just looked up and hey presto! A face, a not-too-happy face, was looking back at him, waiting to be served.

Ok, Mr K, as I shall call him, graciously received the visitor. The client presented his issue to Mr K, but that was not all. Before Mr K knew it, he was being educated on the history of colonialism in our country, and many other important facts that were lodged in the elderly brain of his client. Time passed. People streamed in and out. The sun shifted its place in the sky. And still, the client remained in his seat, telling more of ‘Kaka Sungura’s’ tales.

A whole two hours later, the client finally got to his feet and left, thus blessing us with his absence, and we all breathed a collective sigh of relief.
How does one discourage such visitors?! Somebody should help us!