Ethiopia's Omo Valley
Written by Amanda Jones for The London Sunday Times
Even in today's world of extreme adventure travel, there is still something unsettling about a man, buck-naked but for an automatic assault rifle, jumping out from behind a bush and waving at you with unfettered enthusiasm.
Despite his unnerving choice of accessory, this nude fellow was an emblem of good news. It meant our long, exhausting drive was nearing an end. Nine hundred mostly-unpaved kilometers from Addis Ababa, we were leaving the bounds of "civilized" Ethiopia and finally entering the wilderness of the Omo River Valley. This is a slice of the world so remote and so doggedly tribal that although religious missionaries of all persuasions have preached here for centuries, their converts can typically be counted on one hand. And above all, outsiders have failed to convince these tribes that hand-me-down polo shirts are superior to naked skin.
Our unclad warrior was magnificent. His hair was shaven high off his temples, drawn into a small bun and encrusted with stripes of colored clay. His angular body shone red-black in the sun, his shoulders bore rows of neat scarifications, and around his neck and arms were heavy metal ornaments. The only frightening thing was the gun.
"Most of the tribes have them now," Dawid, our cultured Addis Ababan guide told me with a sorry shake of the head. "You can buy one for ten dollars. They come in by the truckload from Sudan, Somalia and Kenya. Now it's a matter of status to carry one instead of a spear."
So far our three-vehicle convoy had crossed the Chencha Mountains with their lovely hazy views, purple jacarandas and scarlet flame trees. We had descended into the Great Rift Valley and headed further south, towards the borders of Kenya and Sudan. By then the landscape had turned more classically African--dusty earth, flaxen grass and thorny acacia trees.
The problem with visiting the people of Southern Ethiopia is their remoteness. There are often no roads in, and, although the tribes people think nothing of walking 50 miles to get to a town, we ferengie (foreigners) were not quite up to that. We were heading first towards Hamar country, the tribe to which our naked man belonged. The goal was to reach a town called Turmi in time for market day, when hundreds of Hamar gather.
As the blistering sun hit the horizon on the third day, we arrived at Murulle Explorers Lodge. An oasis in the middle of parched bush, the shady camp overlooked the sweeping, muddy Omo River. At that moment, the ten basic concrete cabins seemed positively deluxe. In Africa, ablutive comforts are not to be taken for granted, and each of these had a functioning shower and loo. As I stood under the cold water watching the dust trickle from my body in red rivulets, I thought with amusement how quickly such things as a cold-water shower can become the making of a day.
By now I knew I was traveling with a solid group of people, thank God. It's always roulette when you travel in a group—especially when the journey is hardcore. We were there with Mountain Travel Sobek, a company that runs several trips into Ethiopia. Although Mountain Travel Sobek operate extremely high caliber trips all over the world, many of which are quite fancy, not even they would have you believe there's much luxury involved in this one.
As we sat, clean and happy, knocking back Ethiopian made pinot noir (not bad), watching a full moon rise over the Omo, Dawid gave us the first of many little talks.
"These tribes are extremely demanding about photography. As soon as you show your camera you'll be overrun with people. And you'll have to pay for every photo. They count the clicks."
We'd heard that payment for photography was standard all over Ethiopia. Personally, I don't have any issue with this. If I engage a person's time and energy for my own benefit, they are entitled to compensation. And naturally the tribes know they are the reason for us being there. By my way of thinking, if we remunerate these tribes for sticking with their traditional ways, then possibly we are contributing to cultural preservation. The problem is that in many cases the line between fair trade and extortion has blurred. If the tour leader is not well known among the people, the price soars and the hapless tourists, not knowing any better and desperate for photos, fork over the asked-for money.
To save us the strain of individual negotiations, Dawid offered an alternative. We each agreed to put US$150 dollars worth of birr (the national currency) into a pool. Dawid would transact with the people we wanted to photograph and pay them out of the kitty.
We rose early and headed for Turmi where the sight of the marketplace was stupendous. Several hundred Hamar squatted or stood within a large outdoor square. The women were slick and shiny with a covering of butter, salt and red ochre, giving off a rancid odor. They wore cowhide loincloths trimmed with metal loops, and a skin apron, decorated with cowry shells and beads, hung from the neck and swung loosely. Every limb was weighed heavily with iron bangles, sometimes up to 30 on a single arm. Their hair fell in waxy red droplets, laden with butter and ochre. Most women wore two thick iron collars around their neck, given to them by their fiancé and then welded permanently in place. The thicker the ring, the richer the man. Further proof of the discomforts humans will endure to demonstrate affluence.
The men wore loincloths and were also covered in a buttery sheen. In Hamar society, when a man kills an enemy he is given decorative scars as proof of his great bravery. For each death, a new line of scarification. (The mind boggles to think what the Kalashnikov has done for this practice). When he has murdered so many that his entire torso is covered, the scars spill over onto his wives bodies (Hamar are polygamous). When the process is done correctly, the result actually looks quite beautiful.
As we approached the market the Hamar set on us with cries of "Foto, foto. Birr, birr," tugging on our clothes. There's no denying that photography in the Omo is out of hand. But we cannot disregard our own role in this. We, the tourists, so often rush into "poor" nations and fail to sensitize ourselves to their economy. We feel pity for their poverty (judged often by material goods useless to tribal people), and so instead of paying them, let's say, 50 cents for a couple of photos, or roughly two days worth of food, we hand them five dollars, which is about equal to a fortnight's worth of meals.
Consider that in our society. A stranger shows up in your neighborhood and asks to take your photo. He spends five minutes clicking away and hands you enough money to cover rent for a week. Naturally you would seek these people out. You may even become quite aggressive in your pursuit if them. When you experiment and get away with exacting an extortionate price, you become convinced you deserve it. Greed, apparently, is a deadly sin from which no race is exempt, and magnanimity does not always have the effects we expect.
Just before dusk, Dawid arranged for a few Hamar to come to our camp outside Turmi to be photographed. They were a fine looking group: tall, erect and graceful. One woman in particular possessed a beauty stunning by global measures.
"Can't you see her in New York," someone said. "She'd be a sensation. She'd make a fortune as a model." I led her onto a sand river to take a portrait in the gold light. There was no need to instruct her on how she should hold herself. She cocked her elegant head and stared into my lens through nonchalant almond eyes. She had the bearing of a race that have never been colonized or subjugated, of people who don't need mirrors to recognize their own splendor. I could not imagine her in New York, nor would I wish it for her.
The Hamar are the largest tribe in Southern Ethiopia. They number about 25,000 and are relatively rich. They own cows, grow crops and most of the males own a Kalashnikov. Sura was a skinny eleven-year-old who proudly showed me his gun. He had decorated the barrel with animal fur and clay paint, which struck me as poignantly naive. The gun had cost him two dollars, less for the bullets he coveted in a pouch. He was incredibly careless, swinging the tip at his friends and at his own head. Whenever he came near, I would grab the barrel and hoist it into the air. Although movies like Pulp Fiction do little for Western morality, they have at the very least taught us what bad firearm etiquette can do.
"He's a disaster waiting to happen," said Dawid. "That gun is about 30 years old and you can bet it wasn't cleaned before it was sold to him. If he tried to fire it, it would probably blow up in his face."
At dawn we ate breakfast in the smoky light and then took the vehicles across country, towards the Karo people, dodging thorny acacia trees, dusty land and herds of weary cattle grazing among towering termite mounds.
The Karo are not dissimilar to the Hamar, in fact they are allies in war, although personally I found them much gentler and less intimidating than the Hamar. There are said to be less than 1,000 Karo left. The women are generally very pretty, wearing their hair shorter than the Hamar, but in the same red droplet style. A nail is driven through the skin beneath their bottom lip. This used to be a piece of dried grass, put there for beauty, but with the coming of galvanized steel nails the grass has gone. To our great amusement, when someone translated to them that people in our culture pierce all sorts of body parts, including nipples, they were palpably disturbed.
Later, we heard tales that explained this abhorrence of nipple piercing. After noticing there were no crippled people, or even hair lips or crossed eyes, we were told that those babies were thrown in the river at birth. Although to us this is an unconscionable custom, from a strictly sociological point of view it can be understood. Children are expected to help with the work burden and to care for parents in their old age. No one can afford a child that may never marry or be independent. In Hamar culture, if something goes wrong with a boy's circumcision, (which happens between the age of ten and twelve), he will be drowned. And if an adolescent girl has one malformed breast, or one is damaged in an accident, she also will be tied to a log and drowned.
Like all the tribes, they lived in simple thatched mud huts. As soon as pulled up we were again plagued with demands for "money," "soap," "razors." We could have taken dozens of photos had we had the foresight to pack a few Gillette's. Shaving the hair back off the forehead is standard practice among the tribes, and typically they use bits of ragged metal or sharp stones. A razor to them is what the washing machine was to a '50s housewife.
The final leg of our journey was to the Mursi people. In Southern Ethiopia, this is the tribe who strike fear into the hearts of northern Ethiopians and tourists alike. We'd heard so many lamentable tales about their behaviour that we really didn't know what to expect. The problem is that you can't possibly come all this way and miss the Mursi, famous for the plates the women wear in their lower lips.
Because of their reputation, most visitors make a six-hour round trip drive from Mago National Park to see them. They come tearing down the road, jump out of their cars with cameras blazing and birr a-flying, create a riot, get scared, jump back in the car, lock the doors, and take off again after 15 minutes. The Mursi have this down to a fine art. They encircle the ferengie, manhandle them a little, exact inflated sums for photos, force them to buy chipped lip-plates and then whip up such a racket that the tourists retreat with only a few terrible snapshots of lip-plates looming inches from their lens to show for their expensive foray into Mursi-land.
We, however, were traveling with Chris Rainier, a seasoned photographer. This meant that we must camp with the Mursi in order to get the good light. In fact we ought to spend two nights camping with the Mursi.
"Impossible," said Dawid. "No way."
Chris smiled the smile of a man who used to be a war photographer. A man to whom nothing short of death should ever stand in the way of a good picture.
We drove the four hours from Murulle camp to Mago National Park to inquire about the wisdom of staying with the Mursi. The rangers snorted in disbelief. But, as most things in Africa go, with a little pecuniary persuasion the powers that be supplied us with three armed guards and we were off to camp with the Mursi.
Our plan was this: We swore not to take out our cameras or wallets for the first day we were with them. We'd just "hang out" and "bond" a little. An excellent arrangement.
The Mursi have had a tough time lately, which may explain their desperate need for money and their adamancy in obtaining it. The past few years have seen famine due to crop failure, leaving many of them starving. And the Ethiopian government has recently annexed much of their ancestral land as national parkland, banning the Mursi from living, hunting or grazing their cattle there.
Perhaps we found them on a good day, but when we finally arrived after three tense hours of driving, people materialized out of the bush to greet us with strong handshakes and wide grins. There was eagerness to sell us things, but when we declined they gave up and stood back. They seemed perplexed that there wasn't a single camera among us and stupefied when it was relayed that we were there to stay.
They were muscular, tall, lean and strong. Their heads were shaven, often into a sparse nap with bold geometric shapes patterned into it. The men were either naked or wearing a small loincloth, with scarifications snaking down the arms. Right arm, they have killed a man from an enemy tribe, left arm, a woman. Most men carried Kalashnikovs.
The most extraordinary thing, of course, was the women's lip-plates. It was supposedly a custom invented purely for beauty, although there are other suppositions, including slave trade deterrent. At puberty, the lip is stretched with incrementally large clay plates. A girl's goal is to reach a plate the size of an espresso saucer or bigger before she is married. If she refuses to wear one, it is believed she will be infertile or her family's crops and cattle will perish. The bigger the lip plate, the more a girl commands in bride price. The largest we saw was easily the size of a teacup saucer and had earned the woman's family 50 head of cattle. The plates are incredibly heavy, and the women often take them out when men are not present, leaving their severed lower lips dangling flaccidly over their chins.
As darkness fell, the women chanted and danced for us, and we reciprocated with--oh, the shame--the Macarena. Tittering at our ungainly attempts, they drifted off to their village for dinner while we ate ours. Things had gone swimmingly.
"Ah, but the nighttime will be the real test," Dawid said cynically. He was still very nervous. Our guards sat up all night cradling their Kalashnikovs, which was farcical, since next door, the Mursi were significantly better armed.
We had negotiated with an elder regarding photography, selecting a few models and asking them to show up early in the morning. They came, they posed, they accepted the money, they smiled and drifted off. We felt categorically smug. Imagine being frightened of the Mursi! Those mug day-trippers! We were so encouraged we asked others to come back at sunset for more photographs. And that's when it all went to hell.
One of the female models frightened at a camera's flash and stood up yelling. People came running. Moods darkened. Things escalated. The men shouted that the woman needed extra compensation for her efforts, as did her husband for letting her pose and her neighbor for minding her child. And, while they were at it, they themselves were owed a rather large sum for not being photographed. There were threats, and in the heat of debate a shot was fired. Dawid cajoled, Dawid pleaded, Dawid paid. He was badly shaken and in a panicked voice told us to pack quietly. We'd flee as soon as darkness fell.
Meanwhile, the cooks had prepared dinner and none of us was willing to leave without having eaten it. In fact, other than poor, wrecked Dawid, spirits were running high. Our remaining wine rations were called forth, and we sat at our dining table with its checkered tablecloth eating onion soup and chicken while the air around us sparked with tension. This was, after all, adventure travel.
Under the shroud of darkness and in a frenzied haste to leave before the Mursi discovered us, we broke camp, shoved everything into the vehicles, and roared up the road. Sitting in the rear of the last car, I craned to see if there were any gun toting shadows in hot pursuit. Instead I saw only a few women with babies, hands raised in what I imagined to be a forlorn farewell.
Despite the untimely conclusion of our visit, it was with the infamous Mursi that we had our most palpable cultural experience. Once past seeing us as a source of free-flowing cash, the women had treated us as novel guests. We had laughed at their mimed jokes, tried on their clothing, held their babies, marveled at their hairstyles. We had eventually bought lip plates, jewelry and other objects sold to us at honest prices. I quietly hoped the hair-triggered shooter would get a sound ear bashing from our new friends, the Mursi womenfolk.