Thirteen Months of Sunshine

If you happen to visit Ethiopia you will notice some posters which refer to the country as thirteen months of sunshine . This comes from the fact that you can see the sun in every month of the year in Ethiopia. Believe me but in much of the country there is even no need of air conditioning for much of the year. I will have a future blog on Ethiopian weather but for today I will say a little bit about the Ethiopian Calandar

You might be wondering why I said 13 months and not 12. Ethiopia has it's own calender called the Ethiopian calender which has 13 months rather than 12. All the 12 months have 30 days and the 13th (called Pagumen) has 5 days except in leap year when it will be 6. The Ethiopian calendar is based on the old Alexandrian calendar though I wouldn't go into the details for a novice there are two obvious differences:

• It is 02/26/1998 in Ethiopia on Nov 5, 2006 in Gregorian Calendar
• Every fourth year is a leap year in Ethiopian calender without exception.

See wikipedia's entry on Ethiopian calender for more.

The picture above is the famous Tis Isat falls of the blue nile river found in Bahir Dar Ethiopia