Happy New Year!

Everyone else is acting like it’s the middle of September, but our Ethiopian friends are celebrating New Year's Day, Meskerem 1, this weekend, on the day we know as September 11. Meskerem is the first of thirteen months in the Ethiopian calendar year – there are twelve months of exactly thirty days each, and a thirteenth month of five days (or six, for Leap Years) to make up the difference at the end of the year. This calendar is the basis for Ethiopia’s uniquely charming tourism slogan, “Thirteen Months of Sunshine”. Ironically, Meskerem marks the end of the long rainy season, at least in the central highlands.

This Sunday marks the beginning of the year 2009 in Ethiopia, a little time warp that’s based upon some arcane early Christian scholarship. Back in the day, circa 400 AD to be somewhat more precise, an Egyptian monk named Annianus of Alexandria determined the date of Creation – the exact date of “In the beginning…” – to be March 25, 5492 BC, and established an Anno Mundi calendar system based on the number of years since that date, “in the year of the world.” About a hundred years later, another monk known as Dionysius the Humble introduced a new system of dating called Anno Domini, “in the year of the Lord,” which should sound somewhat familiar to you. Dionysius thought it would be way cool if the Incarnation of Christ (the Annunciation) took place exactly 5,500 years after the date of Creation, so his system starts eight years before Annianus’ system. As you may already have guessed, the Western world eventually adopted Dionysius’ system, while Ethiopia still uses Annianus’ calculations, which accounts for the discrepancy.

As an aside, Internet research tells me that the name of the New Year’s Day holiday in Amharic is “Enkutatash,” which is a word I cannot ever recall having heard while we were in the country. But I do remember learning about the Meskel flowers, bright yellow like tiny daisies, that bloomed everywhere at the end of the rainy season; it was traditional to gather a bouquet of Meskel flowers to welcome the new year.

Twenty-one years ago, it was 1988 in Ethiopia and we were making the transition from six weeks of language school back to working at the FH office on a full-time basis. Or were we…?

Hello Again.

We were reminded in a conversation the other day about how expressive African greetings can be. The topic of that particular conversation was the Zulu greeting “sawubona” which translates to “I see you”; this greeting can be taken as a statement of physical fact or the recognition of an intimate personal connection.

In Ethiopia, we learned to greet people using the Amharic phrase “tena yistilign” or a variation thereof – it was often pronounced as a single word with the “y” dropped – which literally translates to “May (He) give you health”, where the (He) refers to God. Even though it’s only two words long, there’s a lot to unpack from this little phrase. First of all, there’s a cultural recognition of Count Rugen’s immortal statement, “If you haven’t got your health, then you haven’t got anything.” The closest we come in the Western world is saying “Gesundheit!” to bless someone after a sneeze. Second, there’s an implicit monotheistic perspective that assumes the presence of a (male) divine being but works across religious differences, which is handy in a country split almost evenly between orthodox Christianity and Islam. Thirdly, because God is the subject of the phrase, there’s no need to deal with tricky verb conjugations that depend on the gender and the social status of the person you’re speaking to.

The basic verbal greeting can be embellished in a couple of ways. As in the west, there is usually a handshake, but in Ethiopia the left hand often plays a role, grasping your own right wrist or forearm as you offer your right hand in greeting. A small but respectful bow is an optional but acceptable addition to a formal greeting. (Or maybe we bowed because we tended to be taller than the people we were greeting?)

When you’re greeting people you’re close to but maybe haven’t seen for a while, it’s perfectly acceptable to raise the level of difficulty with the addition of kisses – at least two, often three, and sometimes four or more – delivered on or near alternating cheeks. In this case, the handshake is used to draw you in and position you for optimal kiss delivery. The handshake is maintained throughout the kissing phase, and the kisses are punctuated with repeated questions and comments regarding each other’s health and overall appearance: “Endeminesh? Dehnanesh? Endeminesh?” “How are you? Are you well? How are you?” And of course, here’s the place where you have to pay attention to the status and gender of the person you’re talking to, and conjugate your verb accordingly.

How are you? Are you well? You look well. Are you well?