The Ethiopian calendar is not only seven years and eight months behind the Western calendar but also has one extra month.
On Saturday, the Eastern African marked the start of its 2014.
The country’s peculiar calendar comes about because it calculates the birth year of Jesus Christ differently.
When the Roman Catholic amended calculation for the birth of Christ in 500 AD, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church did not. This means that Ethiopia’s new year falls on 11 September or 12 September in leap years in the Western calendar.
To master the Ethiopian calendar you will need to master the rhymes of the days in the calendar.
In the country’s calendar, each of the first 12 months has 30 days while the 13th, the last month of the year, has five or six days, depending on whether it’s a leap year.
Other than the peculiar calendar, time is also counted differently in Ethiopia. A day is divided into two 12-hour slots starting from o6:00, which would make both midday and midnight which is six o’clock in Addis Ababa.
