Finally, the new millennium

By Timothy Pratt (contact)

Friday, Sept. 14, 2007 | 7:45 a.m.

Yoseph Mengesha, decked out in a white soccer jersey and cap that said "Ethiopian Millennium 2000," wanted an outsider to understand something right off.

Just because Ethiopia insists on being the only nation in the world to follow an ancient Coptic calendar, placing the country seven years behind everyone passing a Las Vegas soccer pitch where Mengesha stood Wednesday afternoon, "it doesn't mean you get younger" when you go to the East African country.

That settled, it was on to the celebration: Happy New Year!

So began one of the more striking examples of the expanding cosmopolitan nature of the Las Vegas Valley, where you never know what holiday your neighbor may be observing on any given day because he could be from anywhere in the world.

For as many as 15,000 Ethiopians in the area, two days this week were set aside for reveling in the year 2000, complete with sparkling party hats, noisemakers, an all-night dance, a church service with drums the size of a garbage can and a soccer minitournament.

The soccer was first in line. Under a searing sun, two teams faced off Wednesday afternoon with a former player on Ethiopia's national team playing the role of referee.

On the sidelines, Mengesha and a few others tried to enlighten an observer about a world where you have a year that begins in September and has 13 months, 12 of which contain 30 days, and where the day begins at 7 a.m., not at midnight.

After 10 minutes or so of this - When is Easter? Do you get confused about when your birthday falls? Is it difficult to set up appointments with outsiders? - it's clear that Ethiopians learn early in life to perform numerical conversions in their heads.

"It's a problem. It's simply math," Mengesha said.

That's what happens when your people decide not to go along with a change in the date of Christ's birth that the rest of Christianity decided on in the fifth century.

It seems to match the character of Ethiopia, the sole African nation that has never been colonized, not to mention being the birthplace of coffee and humanity, as many at the week's various events made sure to point out.

After soccer Wednesday, it was time to dance. Except where the party was depended on whom you asked.

This was one of the few signs of the political division back home, because some who oppose the current government organized their own shindig.

Ethiopia has not been without conflict, including nearly two decades of rule under a dictator that ended in the 1990s and allegations of vote-rigging in the most recent election. The current government recently released 10,000 prisoners as a gesture to critics and in an effort not to stain the millennium celebration, according to news accounts.

Approaching midnight at a rented dance hall, Fekre W. Hana said he thought the dancing going on around him, with men and women shifting shoulders in seeming imitation of a cock's strut, was strictly nonpartisan.

"We are all one here," he shouted over a bumping bass, percussive synthesizers and a nasal voice praising the new millennium. "There are 364 other days for politics."

Hana, like many Ethiopians in the valley, both men and women, drives a cab. That's because, Seifu G. Tessema explained, Ethiopians "don't like a boss behind you."

Some of those who danced until dawn appeared Thursday morning at the low-ceilinged, cramped Las Vegas church where Orthodox Christian Ethiopians in the valley worship.

The service was punctuated by nasal chants in Amharic, a drum with a 2-foot-wide head that made a deep boom and moved babies and old ladies alike, and a recurring theme - praise to adeye, a yellow flower that blossoms in September back home.

Suddenly, as if by magic, women swaying in the aisles had bright yellow blossoms behind their ears, forming a compelling scene: yellow petals, ochre skin, white shawls.

By then, out in the heat of the parking lot, it was noon - or was it? And was it 2000 or 2007?

As confusing as the Coptic calendar can be for outsiders, in a twist, Ethiopians across the United States made their own changes this year, a concession to their adopted homeland.

Markos Anjullo had explained the day before that the New Year actually fell on Sept. 11. But Ethiopians decided to bring in their new millennium either before or after a day that six years ago, by any calendar, was forever changed.

"This celebration should have happened yesterday," Anjullo said Wednesday. "But we didn't want to celebrate our happiness with someone else's sorrow."