It is Friday 10 September when the editors of this page receive an e-mail from Amanuel Kihshen from Ethiopia, a Master student of Electrical Engineering. “In case you may be interested, my Ethiopian friends and I are going to celebrate the Ethiopian New Year tomorrow (September 11). Tomorrow will be the first day of the year 2003 in our calendar.” Our curiosity was aroused: how come that Ethiopians wish each other Happy 2003 on 11 September 2010?

The mail continues: “We use a Julian calendar and it lags seven or eight years behind the Gregorian calendar (which is used by the rest of the world). We have thirteen months. The first twelve months have thirty days each and the last month has five or six days, depending on whether it is a leap year or not.”

The Ethiopian New Year falls at the end of the rainy season. For Ethiopians this is the moment when they express their hopes and wishes. On New Year’s Eve people light fires in front of their houses. The next day they visit family and friends and eat and drink together. (SK)