SURVIVAL
Before the cattle-jumping ceremony, Hamar female women blow their horns and shout taunts to the Mauza, a group of men who have already completed the ceremony, and who will whip the women. Hamar women regard the scars as a proof of devotion to their husbands.
Today, however, the tribes are threatened by a massive hydroelectric dam, and associated land grabs for plantations. The dam will block the southwestern part of the river, so ending its natural flood cycle and jeopardizing the tribes’ flood-retreat cultivation methods.
There is no singing and dancing along the Omo River now, a tribesman told Survival. The people are too hungry. The kids are quiet. PHOTO/© Ingetje Tadros/Survival International
In Ethiopia, before a Hamar man can marry, he needs to race over a line of cattle.
Smeared with dung to give him strength – the cattle are also covered in dung, which makes them slippery – a man must run over up to 30 cattle four times, without falling. If successful, the man becomes a Maza; men who have successfully completed this rite of passage.
The Hamar and other tribes have lived in the Lower Omo valley for centuries; the region is believed to have been a cultural crossroads for thousands of years, where a vast diversity of migrating peoples have converged. PHOTO/© Mario Gerth/Survival
Dance is one vibrant expression of tribal peoples’ spiritual beliefs.
In the narrow valleys of the Hindu Kush in Pakistan, the Kalash people celebrate the winter solstice with the festival of choimus.
Girls wearing costumes decorated with cowrie shells, and necklaces made from apricot kernels, dance around bonfires singing hymns to the spirit of Balomain and offer seasonal foods to their ancestors. PHOTO/© David Stewart-Smith / www.davidstewart-smith.com/
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