C'Lela dictionary appendix calendar
Apart from the fact that the C'Lela year begins on [1st] November, there are one or two other points of interest. [1] The circle diagram keeps the C'Lela months exactly in step with the English/Hausa months, although English months have varying numbers of days. [2] The year seems to be a solar year, which also implies that the months are not lunar months. [3] Unfortunately I cannot interpret the inner circle of activities ... I assume they are agricultural, and linked to the climatic year... or are some religious activities [or linked to religious activities]? [4] There presumably was some [astronomical or climatic] event which signalled the start of a New Year on 1st November. [5] Is there a 'week? [6] Do days of the month/week have names or are they only numbered? [7] How are succeeding years counted? Are they named, or have they an epochal number, like 2013 AD?
I wish I had thought of exploring local calendar in Ethiopia in the 1980s.
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Afraid I can't really add too much here. I remember being a little suspicious of the apparent neat alignment with a Western solar calendar. I think there may be a variety of interpretations and developments going on depending on who you ask in A'Lela. Day names work around market days (or did in 2001) and I think relative to the current day. So there are not C'Lela-wide day names and in some places there was a 5-day cycle and others a 10-day cycle, and others a 7-day cycle I believe. I think the crucial foundation of the Lelna year is harvest. So Go̱lmo̱ is the ritual agricultural work undertaken by adolescent boys during rains over a period of 7 years for your future inlaws. Harvest is September / October I seem to recall. Rainy season (April to September) is a focus on farming above all else. Social stuff is more saved for dry season. That might explain why a solar calendar may make sense. I'm afraid I don't have the dictionary usefully available online in order to interpret the inner months. I do hope to unicode-ify it and make some of it available so you could figure out something about those activities. U'Hola in December seems to be a major community festival from what I can recall. It's a time to come back from wherever you've travelled.
You can get the dictionary here: http://blog.rowbory.co.uk/linguistics/clela-dictionary/
Naming days after market locations seems to be a fairly common way of setting up cycles less than a month. It may be that C'Lela months coalesced with the western calendar when the two came into real contact, so that months adjusted in length to keep in step. That would also lose a link to the lunar month, usually beginning at the observation of New Moon. Yeah, David, a translation of activities from November through would be helpful, plus comments when needed on agriculture and climate. From what you say, I am guessing that "the start of a new agricultural year" signals the beginning of the new calendar year, and there is no astronomical link. Another question is whether there were any festivals, ritual activities linked to calendar.