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At first, I found it difficult to understand why two
societies, here and beyond the horizon, over there;
celebrated the same holidays in different ways and at
different periods as well. There was a time I prided myself
for having two of everything, year in and year out: Two
Christmases, two New Years, two Easters, and so on. The
reason, I was to later learn, was because of the differences
between the Gregorian and Julian calendars.
Whatever popular American magazines have to say about the
matter, Ethiopia is definitely not seven years behind
everyone else. The true facts are that we stayed where we
were: The others, with clever mathematical manipulation of
the phases of the sun and moon jumped ahead by seven years;
tempestuous and intemperate youth that they were and became,
versus the mature and far seeing adult that we were then,
and still maintain. No apologies proffered on the
Ethiopian’s part.
Unique is a word used to describe something that cannot be
fully matched for its beauty or majesty, nor have a value
set on it. Take the example of the architectural wonders
that dot Ethiopia’s landscape. UNESCO has determined that
the Lallibela rock hewed Churches deservedly belong to the
world’s greatest historic heritage.
And then there are the obelisks at Axum, one of which
Ethiopia finally got back from Italy, to be re-erected with
the pomp and circumstance that it deserved. This was in
marked contrast to when it was pilfered and erected in Rome,
Italy, again with much pomp and circumstance, but tinged
with the mischief and arrogance of the conqueror.
What marks these two wonders is not the fact that they are
Ethiopian, so much as that they are truly matchless in the
history of the country and indeed the world. There are
artefacts that are indigenous to a country and to a large
extent are identified only with one country. In this way,
the Sphinx is Egypt at its magnificent best; and the Taj
Mahal personifies India in its unhurried opulence.
There are characteristics also that can be identified with
a country but are not as obvious as any architectural
masterpiece. These are often tied to cultural traits and
mores, and had been in use as tools for eons past. Indeed,
these same tools have persisted to a large extent, to the
present day, in spite of obsessive and omnipresent pressures
of globalisation. All this in spite of high-powered selling
tactics by manufacturers of cars, furniture suites and soft
drinks.
Ethiopians still use the measurements as provided for in
the Bible. True, the metre and the centimetre are taking
over, and are in common use, but until recently merchants,
farmers and the lay population used methods past down to
them by their forebears.
In Mercato, dealers and buyers both use the feresula
as a measurement of weight when dealing with honey and
berbere. The single unit of one feresula weighs
in at exactly 17Kg.
Just six months ago, we all saw the escalation of prices
for all commodities. One of the first to be affected
was berbere, whose price went through the roof. The
price went up from a low of 25 Br per kilo to 70 Br. That is
in today’s parlance. But both buyer and seller were,
however, using the system that they understood, that of the
feresula. Bulk buying by individuals or
establishments would be quoted, therefore, in the figure of
170Kg.
The weight of 100Kg, in the form that we all recognise: A
sack full of cereal being hauled from ship holds and loaded
onto lorries, or stacked in huge warehouses; also has its
Ethiopian equivalent. Since the weight measure is in fact
still being used, it is more than just an equivalent.
To start with the least figure, and working up the scale,
so to speak: There is the qunna. Measured on a straw
pan, onto which the cereal would be heaped minded by a
watchful buyer and seller; four heaped quannas
amounted to one inqib; two inqibs equalled one
daulla which, it so happens, is 100Kg; be it of wheat,
lentils and soya, or whatever else you want bagged.
This newspaper often reports on farmland, their produce or
the price of that produce in the local and international
markets. The farmlands themselves stretch the length and
breadth of the country and the produce are as varied - as
some sage said at one time - as the different pebbles in a
river bed.
This variety is only possible because of the land into
which it is planted. And it is that land, and the
measurement of it, and the division of it that has consumed
so much of humanity’s time.
In Ethiopia, until the advent of the Derg, land and
its ownership were measured in gashas, one gasha
being 40hct. There were reports that Saudi Arabia was
considering investing in 5,000hct of arable land in
Ethiopia. That would be the equivalent of 125 gashas.
To this old hat, that is a lot of land when expressed in
those terms.
There is a picture of Ethiopia which no self-respecting
tourist would do without. She would instead, I am sure, give
her back teeth for a picture of a farmer tilling his land,
using his very faithful oxen pulling a plough that dates
back to Biblical times. This same tourist might be lucky if
he snaps a young boy at the tiller, a frequent sight in the
south of the country because the soil would be soft and
pliable. In the middle and northern areas, the soil is
volcanic and hard. Adults tend to do the ploughing instead.
The visitor sees only the toil that goes into the ploughing
process, but not how it gets to be done.
How long does it take him, for instance, to plough?
For ages, the farmer and his oxen would be set to plough a
given field, the length of which in one straight line would
be called the qirrtt. It would take a farmer between
two and three days to plough four of those qirrtts.
Four qirrtts equalled one hectare, or 10,000Sqm.
It would take our farmer four and a half years to plough
those 5,000hct of land. Singular.
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