M.O. ENE
It is another new year, as concocted by Roman emperors copying ancient African astronomy. The dominant Gregorian calendar with its 12 mismatched months now trumps Igbo traditional calendar: the perfect and natural calendar with no hocus-pocus alterations of the days of a lunar month.
From kindergarten, we sang and absorbed the abracadabra:
#Thirty days hath September,
April, June, and November;
February has 28 or 29 alone,
And all the rest have thirty-one!#
If you read up on how we got to the Gregorian calendar, an improvement of Julian version, how the months were reconfigured, some days simply expunged, how the beginnings of the year changed, how months were renamed, etc. you will agree that another cosmetic surgery is not now necessary.
The Igbo ancestors set our calendar by observing the natural world. For reasons analyzed elsewhere, the Igbo calendar has four days in a native week: Eke, Orie, Afọ, and Nkwọ. After seven native weeks, the moon (ọnwa) reappears. Thus, 28 days yield a lunar month. This period reflects the fertility period of a human female. The human gestation period, the full term for a pregnancy, is 280 days: 10 moons. Note also that 10 (decimal) is the primary counting digits of humans.
In a tropical half-daylight and half-nighttime calculation, an Igbo year has 364 days. Thus, they divided the year into 13 lunar months of 28 days each and seven weeks of four days each. This reflects the sense of equity among the Igbo of Africa, the freedom to improve, and the law that forbids taking away the only equal gift of Anị, the Earth deity: life.
The perfect Igbo math falls short of the 365.25 days of solar calendar, which the Gregorian calendar now mainstreams. Our planet is not a perfect globe. In addition to its solely self-determined rotation, the earth revolves around the Sun, the star at the center of our cosmological system.
Apparently, ancient Igbo chronometry knew about the ‘missing’ days. Every four years, the scholars added four days with a four-day feasting and a day of rest called ‘ịchụ afọ’—‘to chase the year.’ Thus, the realigned 364-day system compensates for the earth’s revolution around the sun and keeps the calendar in line with scientific reality. If not done, the planting season would be skewed!
In his popular anti-slavery narrative, Equiano—an Igbo and the father of American autobiography, used the term ‘afọ wa kaa’ (lit: ‘the year they tell’—those who calculate the years) for the Igbo chronometric scholars of yore. The great men must have been popular to be retained in the memory of an enslaved noble lad less than 12 years old.
The following excerpt is from “The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano” (1789):
“They calculated our time, and foretold events, as their name imported, for we called them Ah-affoe-way-cah, which signifies calculators or yearly men, our year being called Ah-affoe. They wore their beards, and when they died, they were succeeded by their sons. Most of their implements and things of value were interred along with them.
The year 2022 started on Eke day and ended on Eke day; 2023 starts today on Orie and will end on December 31, Orie; 2024 will start on Afọ and end on Nkwọ; but 2025 starts on Eke and ends on Eke. Why the change in 2024? ‘Leap year’! The mismatch occurs again in 2028. A mismatch and realignment will occur in 2032, when the 13-moon natural Igbo calendar coincides with the 12-month artificial Roman calendar.
The proposal here is not for a disruption. Enough cut-and-nail efforts went into what is now the Gregorian calendar. Yet, it has not stopped the Jews, the Arabs, the Chinese, etc. from observing their native calendars. The drive here is to preserve our inheritance and advance our cultural attributes in line with modern perceptions and mainstream practices. No culture is static; all are dynamic: Unadvanced or unchanged, some survive and thrive; others fumble and fail to live!
To preserve and advance our ancestral science of astronomy, Ndiigbo should consider a general return for a four-day feast in 2025 and 2032: “Ịchụafọ.” The annual “Ịgụafọ” will continue with ọfala, ịgbankwụ, soccer matches, masquerades, and sundry celebrations, but the big pan-Igbo colossal celebration will be during “Ịchụafọ,” the ritual of realignment.
As the Igbo diaspora expands and becomes much more permanent, especially with the emergence of the ‘Meghan Markles’ (the DNA-identified natives), the Olympics-like ceremony of general or mass return will support and sustain Aladimma, an Igbo nation. Everything is not politics; our culture is our future.
Happy Gregorian New Year!
#moe, Sunday, Orie, January 1, 2023
@aladimma
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