While some countries have rules on how to compute the age of leaplings, Kenyan laws appear silent on it.
Bonface Ong'era is 32 this year. He is also turning eight.
Confusing, isn't it?
The teacher was born on February 29, 1992. This Thursday will be the eighth time he has celebrated his birthday on the exact date he was born.
He is one of the not-so-few people who are born on a date that appears on the calendar once every four years.
They are called leaplings, and although they add a year to their age every March 1 in non-leap years, there is something special about the way they age.
They leap onto the next year, one might argue.
Some models say as many as five million people in the world were born on February 29.
Mr Ong’era has the company of famous people like American rapper Ja Rule (Jeffrey Atkins) who, as he turned 40 in 2016, joked that he was turning 10.
Old as he is, Mr Ong’era says there are times people ridicule him for being underage.
He hopes to make this year’s birthday extra special, and he has his daughter, who turned three on February 15, as his main focus.
“Every special day is a chance to celebrate special people in my life and my daughter it is this year,” he told the Nation.
Gachoka Wanjiru, an administrator with the county government of Kiambu, will be turning 36 this year but he jokes that he is hitting nine.
He says that he never used to think much about his birthday until he became a family man who is reminded of his date of birth as he celebrates those of his wife and children.
While some countries have rules on how to compute the age of leaplings, Kenyan laws appear silent on it.
However, Mr Gachoka said he has not experienced that problem with his official age.
“Legally, there are no issues. But now that you have mentioned it, I will check my retirement age with the government,” he said jokingly.
However, a small problem arises when people send him birthday wishes on non-leap years.
“Sometimes someone will want to send you birthday wishes on February 28th. Of course, you will insist that you were not born on the 28th. Others will send you their messages on March 1st and you have to tell them, ‘I was born last month.’ So, you’re somewhere in-between,” he noted.
Leaplings are always an invitation to revisit the politics that ended up in the Gregorian calendar we use today.
It was a product of superstition, ego, and a great deal of back-breaking mathematics.
Written material on the origins of the calendar shows that thousands of years back, humans were concerned about having a predictable way of counting their days.
They hoped to have planting seasons start on the same date every year and to witness the start of seasons like winter on a regular date. This made rulers, clergymen and the general public work hard to create a calendar.
Before 1582, when the Gregorian calendar that Kenyans use became widely adopted, there was a calendar that had 10 months. Seeking to align itself to the moon patterns, it started in March and ended in December.
According to a paper on the University of Chicago website, the 10-month calendar was changed by the second king of Rome who inserted January and February.
This was caused by the fact that the moon that they were using to count months was not exactly aligned to the Earth’s solar year.
When they were added to the calendar, January and February had 28 days each, but January later got an additional day to make it 29.
February remained with 28 days and at that time, Romans considered even numbers (those divisible by two) unlucky. So, February with its 28 days was the black sheep.
“Considered unlucky, it was devoted to rites of purification (februa) and expiation appropriate to the last month of the year,” says the University of Chicago paper.
According to Encyclopædia Britannica, February was also the month for honouring the dead.
The evolution of the calendar reached a point where it was discovered that the calendar year is approximately a quarter of a day longer than the solar year.
People worked out that if a day would be added every four years, it would cater for this.
The University of Chicago paper notes that the initial solution was to count February 24 twice.
“The notion of February 29 is a modern construct,” it notes.
One of the most radical changes in the calendar happened in 1582 when, on the orders of Pope Gregory XIII, October 4 was followed by October 15.
This was to cure the errors arising from the Julian calendar, named after Julius Caesar.
Another discrepancy was realised in that even with leap years factored, there would still be around 11 minutes unaccounted for.
“By the mid-1500s, the cumulative effect of this error had shifted the dates of the seasons by about 10 days from Caesar’s time,” Encyclopædia Britannica states.
This was cured by a rule that every 400 years, three leap years would be omitted.
“A leap day would not be added in those years that ended in hundreds unless they were divisible by 400,” says the University of Chicago paper.
“Using this system, the years 1900, 2100, and 2200 are not leap years (despite being divisible by four), but 1600, 2000, and 2400 are,” adds Encyclopædia Britannica.
Clearly, this Thursday, the lot who progress on all fours age-wise will be savouring the moment as they leap into their next age.
