Is there a difference between 50^th year & 50^th birthday?

 By MUNGAI KIHANYA

The Sunday Nation

Nairobi,

26 January 2014

Did we celebrate the 50th anniversary of our independence a year too late? No! Have I ever claimed that we celebrated it too late? No!

The opening sentence of my article of 12th January 2014 was: “There is no argument about this: Kenya is 50 years old (plus a few weeks).” Surely, with such a clear statement at the outset, nobody should claim that I said our celebrations were a year late! But very many readers did and even one of them (Boniface Okoth Oyalo) was featured here last week (19th January).

I suspect the confusion was caused by the headline asigned by the editor who worked on the article. It was: “Why Kenya @50 Celebrations were a year late”. I must emphasise that this was not my doing! My original title was “Contrary to popular belief, this is not the 50^th year of independence”

Nevertheless, I agree with what Boniface says about Kenya’s 50^th birthday –it was on 12^th December 2013 but I disagree with him one the start date of the second millennium – it was NOT 1^st January 2000 but 1^st January 2001.

To understand why, consider a child who was born on 1^st January 2000; what age did he turn on 1^st January 2014? Obviously 14 years old. But in which year of his life is he today (26 January 2014)? Is it the 14^th year or the 15^th?

We work this out by asking when this by was in his first year of life: was it from in 2000 or 2001? I don’t know about Boniface, but I would insist that it was 2000 – starting from 1^st January and ending on 31^st December. That whole 12-month period was the boy’s first year of life.

Now, when Pope Gregory-XIII introduced the modern calendar, his intention was to count the years from the date when Jesus was born. According to pope’s advisers at the time (in the 1500s), Jesus was born on 25^th December of year 1BC. Thus, in line with Jewish tradition, his date of record (when he was circumcised and named) must have been seven days later, on 1^st January of the year 1AD.

Historians now know that Pope Gregory’s advisers were wrong: Jesus was actually born about 3 to 7 years earlier – now you know that Uhuru Kenyatta is not the first leader to be given wrong advice!

All the same, the important point to note is that there was no year zero! Thus the anniversary of 2,000 years from the start date of the modern calendar was NOT 1^st January 2000. It was 1^st January 2001. That’s the date when 2,000 years ended…and we started the third millennium.

It is the same argument used in calling this the 21^st century even though the years begin with the number “20” – as in 2013, 2014, etc. Therefore, Kenya’s 50^th birthday was correctly celebrated on 12^th December 2013, but that day also marked the beginning of the 51^st year of independence. Like I wrote in the article of 12^th January, this 51^st year will end on 12^th December 2014.