Timing is different than incrementing. Take a look at the statsd docs to get a feel for it: http://statsd.readthedocs.org/en/latest/reference.html#timing

Instead of using statsd on this line, I think you need to store a start time in the session like:

    request.session['wait_start'] = calendar.timegm(time.gmtime())

And then in subsequent requests you'll need to do a delta on that value. Maybe? I'm not sure the best way to do timing.