Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Whether you're using your home phone on a roaming plan or a locally bought phone and
SIM card, expect hours, or sometimes days, to go by when, despite having a reception, it's
impossible to actually make a call or send a text message.
Internet-enabled smart phones are also unreliable.
Phone Numbers & Codes
All Ethiopian numbers have 10 digits. The international country code for Ethiopia is
251 and you need to drop the first zero from the number when calling from abroad. Other
important telephone numbers are listed in the Need to Know chapter,
Click here
.
Time
Ethiopia is three hours ahead of GMT/UTC.
»Time is expressed so sanely in Ethiopia that it blows most travellers' minds! At sunrise
it's 12 o'clock (6am our time) and after one hour of sunshine it's one o'clock. After two
hours of sunshine? Yes, two o'clock. The sun sets at 12 o'clock (6pm our time) and after
one hour of darkness it's…one o'clock! Instead of using 'am' or 'pm', Ethiopians use 'in
the morning', 'in the evening' and 'at night' to indicate the period of day.
»The system is used widely, though the 24-hour clock is used occasionally in business. Be
careful to ask if a time quoted is according to the Ethiopian or 'European' clock (
Be
habesha/faranji akotater no?
- Is that Ethiopian/foreigner's time?). For the purposes of
this topic, all times quoted are by the European clock.
OH, TO BE YOUNG AGAIN
In addition to the Ethiopian clock system, another Ethiopian time-keeping idiosyncrasy that confounds many a
traveller is the calendar. It's based on the old Coptic calendar, which has its roots in ancient Egypt. Although it has
12 months of 30 days each and a 13th month of five or six days, like the ancient Coptic calendar, it follows the
Julian system of adding a leap day every four years without exception (which is the sixth day of the short 13th
month). If you're travelling during a leap year and want to attend a specific festival check you've got the dates
right - we have heard plenty of stories of people missing Christmas celebrations by a day and that includes people
on an organised tour!
What makes the Ethiopian calendar even more unique is that it wasn't tweaked by numerous popes to align
with their versions of Christianity, like the Gregorian calendar (introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582) that
Westerners have grown up on.
