Gadaa is not an ornament. It is a constitution that runs on an eight-year clock: five gada classes and eleven age grades, power handed over on schedule whether the Abbaa Gadaa wants to hand it over or not. The assembly meets under the odaa sycamore-fig, the regalia are the kallacha, the bokkuu and the siinqee, and the colours are a diagram rather than a palette.

This system takes that literally. Black, red and white are not accents — black is the life not yet entered, red the life being lived, white the life passed through. The ground is undyed handspun bullukoo cotton. Everything cyclical is drawn in equal, countable segments, because a cycle you cannot count is not a cycle.