Omo Valley Travel

Hamar Tribe

The Hamar people are principally pastoralists, breeding cattle, goats and sheep. They have a similar veneration for cattle as their close neighbors. The women and girls grow crops, with the staple being sorghum, but they also grow beans, maize and pumpkin. The women are also responsible for collecting water, cooking, and looking after the household and children – who start helping the family by herding the goats from around age eight. The young men of the village work the crops and defend the herds, while adult men herd the cattle, plough with the oxen and raise beehives in acacia trees.
The Hamar are amongst the most readily identifiable of all the peoples of the South Omo. Women wear an elaborately decorated goatskin, often colored with beads and cowries. Beaded necklaces, bracelets and waistbands adorn their bodies, which, for the Hamar, tend to be made with black and red beads. (The Banna, their close neighbors, mostly use blue and black beads). Women wear thick copper necklaces announcing their marital status. They wear a lather long tipped necklace and two copper necklaces if they’re the first wife and only two copper necklaces if they’re second, third or fourth wife to one man.

One striking characteristic of the Hamar men and women is that they indulge in elaborate hair-dressing. Men wear a clay cap which is painted and decorated with feathers and other ornaments. They also paint themselves with white chalk paste during ceremonial events. The women decorate their hair with clay and butter twisted into a striking long plait. Ethnic men are often seen carrying a small stool or pillow in the Omo region in general.

Mursi Tribe

The Mursi live in an almost inaccessible area between the Mago and Omo Rivers within the Valley. They are predominantly nomadic pastoral but they also engage in limited agriculture. Cattle are the Mursi’s most prized possession. They measure wealth by the number of cattle they own and men name themselves after the color of their favorite cattle while women tend to be named after wild animals with an interesting skin colors like giraffe, leopard, zebra, colobus monkey, kudu, etc. The Mursi are considered one of the wealthiest tribes in the area as they own greater numbers of cattle. Virtually every significant social relationship, most notably marriage, is marked and validated by the exchange of cattle. The dowry is usually a number of cattle (around 30–40) and, more commonly nowadays, a gun. This bride wealth is given to the bride’s father by the groom’s family. For this reason, female children are seen as a blessing because they will eventually contribute to their father’s wealth. This doesn’t mean that male children are any less important as they will be responsible for looking after the livestock. Despite their reverence for cattle, the Mursi also practice flood retreat cultivation and rain-fed bush-land cultivation. It has been suggested that if they were to be denied access to the Omo River they could only survive by becoming dependent on food aid. Their main crop is sorghum, but they also grow maize, beans, chick-peas and tobacco. They are also known to hive bees for honey and consume different spices of wild edible plants with high nutritional values.

Karo/Kara Tribe

Unlike with the lowland pastoralists, cattle are owned in small numbers by the Kara, and goats are their main livestock. Although pastoralist by tradition, the Kara now subsist growing sorghum, maize and other crops because of the livestock losses to disease in the tsetse-infected area some years ago.

The Kara lives together in three large villages (Korcho, Duss and Labuk) as they are comparatively few in number.

The Kara doesn’t have their own markets so they trade with the Hamar at the markets in Dimeka and Turmi. The Kara does have a traditional way of fishing. A portion of wood is sharpened at one end and used to spear fish in the Omo River or Lake Karo. In the language of the Kara people, the word Kara means fish.They have cultural and linguistic commonalities with the Hamar and perform the cattle jumping ceremony for young Kara boys to pass into adulthood.
In common with most of the tribes, scarification plays an important role in Kara body decoration. The men plaster their hair in tight buns (previously recognized as a hero sign) The hairstyle favored by Kara women is tightly cropped at the side, tied into bulbous knots and dyed ochre on top. Men and women also make an incision below their bottom lip and insert a nail or piece of wood. The Kara men are best known for the elaborate body painting they indulge in before important ceremonies. They paint their faces and bodies in white chalk and pierce their ears in five places.

Dassanech Tribe

The Dassanech live around the Omo delta on the northern side of Lake Turkana. They practice flood retreat cultivation, pastoralism and fishing. The Dassanech are the most southerly ethnic group living in Ethiopia’s Omo valley. The lands of the Dassanech are semi-arid and they live where the Omo delta enters Lake Turkana. Their name means People of the Delta. Despite the lake and delta, this is an incredibly dry region; there is nothing but desert to the west and southwest.

Cattle are central to the lives of the Dassanech, just as they are for the other ethnicities of the Omo valley. As well as meat, milk, leather for clothing, houses and mattresses, they provide status in the community, and the bride-wealth that allows a man to marry.

The Dassanech community is not strictly defined by ethnicity. Over time the ethnic group has absorbed a wide range of different peoples and it’s now divided in to eight main clans. Each clan has its own identity and customs, its own responsibilities towards the rest of the community, and is linked to a particular territory.

Suri/Surma Tribe

The Suri are agro-pastoralists who live in the lowlands to the west of the Omo bordering Sudan. They live a similar lifestyle to the Mursi. As with the Mursi, cattle are invaluable to them. For both these peoples, it is the woman’s job to take care of the household and the land. Traditionally, their homes are constructed from wood and grasses, and most of the cooking takes place outside on an open fire. The young boys and unmarried men take care of the cattle. They spend much of the year in temporary grazing camps, returning to their established settlements for additional food and ceremonial events.

To the untrained eye it’s difficult to tell the Suri and Mursi apart. Their clothing, beautification processes of scarification, lip plates, hair design and jewelry are all similar. Like the Mursi, Suri girls are adorned with a lip plug from their mid-teens. A hole is pierced in the lower lip and plugged with a piece of wood until it heals. It is then stretched by the girl who repeatedly places larger wooden plugs in the hole until it is replaced by the clay plate. The Suri practice the art of body painting. Different clays are collected to acquire colors ranging from red, orange, yellow and white. They are mixed with a little water and painted onto face and body. The Suri are exceptional artists, although each design is both unique and only temporary. The Mursi practice this art to a lesser extent, but generally with less aptitude.