The story
Wolaita Gifaata in Wolaita Sodo
Gifaataa is the Wolaita people's New Year festival, held between mid-September and early October and built around reconciling old disputes, sharing meals and blessings with elders, and community bonfires over a full ten days. Wolaita Sodo hosts a particularly public staging organized by the city's youth, closing with a communal event called goolo-igetta featuring horse riding and music.
Gifaataa, meaning roughly the beginning, marks the Wolaita people's New Year sometime between mid-September and early October, and functions as a deliberate bridge from the old year to the new, understood locally as a movement from darkness into light.