28 Feb 2016

 Birthdays are generally the most celebrated days the world over.  Forgetting to wish a loved one happy birthday on their special day might land one into big trouble.  

Although a lot of people go to extra lengths to celebrate this day, having to wait for four years to have an actual birthday is a bit bizarre.

Today, (February 29) is a leap day.  It is the extra day that is added to the calendar every four years.  Today,  people who are born on February 29 ‘Leaplings’  would get a chance to celebrate their true birthdays after having to wait for four years to celebrate on the actual day they were born.

This then means that these people were born in a ‘rare’ day, making it somewhat special as it comes once in four years.

So in non-leap years, leaplings have to choose to have their birthdays either on February 28 or March 1.  

This is a common problem among people born on leap years.  Figuring out when to celebrate in those years is quite a challenge as some feel that celebrating on February 28 is a day soon while some feel that March 1 is totally a different month.

Thandie Keitumetse, an intern in the Department of Information Services is over the moon today as she celebrates her 28th birthday.

“I am very excited, I wish there could be a big party today,” she said.

However, Keitumetse has chosen to celebrate her birthday on February 28 during non-leap-years because she also feels that celebrating on March 1 is a different month. She also says she is not really bothered by celebrating her day sooner on the 28th.  

Nonetheless, she narrates how she fret when a close friend did not wish her a happy birthday during one of the past non-leap years.  She only learnt on March 1 that her friend had actually planned a surprise party for her as he simply took it that was her birthday. 

Keitumetse explains that Facebook notifies her friends that her birthday is on February 28 and March 1 something that they ‘leaplings’ get to enjoy as they receive special attention.

For  Tedzani Chingapani, a senior technical assistant at the Department of Buildings and Engineering Services, this year’s birthday is a memorable one.  He is celebrating his real birthday.  Not only that, he is turning 40!  

“I am more than excited because life begins at 40,” he said.

Normally his parents are the first to wish him a happy birthday.  Even today, he is expecting them to do the same.   Chingapani said being the last born of three siblings, he feels that he is special because his parents got married in 1975 and he was born in 1976 in Botswana in a leap year while his older two siblings were born in South Africa before his parents got married.

While this is a big day for Chingapani, he would not be able to celebrate as he is travelling due to work commitments.  However, he is planning to throw a big party in 2020 when he turns 44.

Zachs Sethaiso is celebrating his birthday today, thanks to the calendrical complexities of the Gregorian calendar.  Sethaiso was actually born on February 29, 1956, but if one calculates the number of genuine birthdays recorded on the calendar, the number one gets is 15 proper birthdays because his birthdays appear only once every four years.  But chronologically, he is 60 today.

His story is quite intriguing.  With Sethaiso having been born in the 50s, complicates the matter further.  During those times, there were no birth certificates.  That means, there was no official recording of birthdays of people who were born during those days.

To make it worse, parents in those years were not educated so they did not care much about birthdays.  Giving birth to a healthy child was more than enough.

When he was growing up, his mother told him that he was born in February and March.  While growing up as a young boy, he learnt that his peers were celebrating their birthdays and they would fuss about it while on the other hand they told him that he did not really have a birthday.

BOPA