Ethiopia uses an interesting time and date system. In some ways their system makes good
sense. It can however be confusing to a
new comer.
In Ethiopia the day starts at 06:00 am (our time). So,
06:00 am is really midnight and the day gets going from there.
An example: Someone
might say, we should meet at 05:00 am (Ethiopian time). You need to do a quick time conversion to
realize this means you are to meet at 11:00 am (our time). You can imagine the potential for missed
appointments and arriving way too early for meetings.
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| 03:00 am start |
Our most recent conundrum: we saw an advertisement for a
road race and thought we might like to register. Start time was listed at 03:00 am, which
seemed a tad early to get to the start line. However, once you do the time conversion,
09:00 is quite a civilized start time.
Ethiopia also has its own ancient calendar. It is a calendar
of 13 months and is based on the Ge’ez calendar (you can look it up). Basically, the Ethiopian calendar has twelve
months of 30 days plus a 13th month of 5 or 6 days. Our calendar is
based on the Gregorian calendar (twelve months and a leap day every four
years.)
The good news is that
it is only 2004 here because of an alternate calculation of the Annunciation of
Jesus, or for the more secular minded, year 0.
This means Sunil is 3 years old, and can remind us that he is really too
young to attend school.
Of course, I am exaggerating a bit, usually all goes well
with time and date but there has been the odd funny episode.
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| Helpful info-European Time |
Overall I am really confused about the date and time in Ethiopia but I did understand that while there you are anti-aging. Great! Tell Aysha we just did dance registrations on Thursday and I am already feeling the void she has left when I look at the class list and I don't see her name. :( Take care and keep the posts coming!
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