Author: eatours

This is the most southerly of the tribes who live in Ethiopia’s Omo Valley only 28km from the Kenya border. They live in small huts made from sticks, corrugated iron & animal hide. The men and a few of the women carry around guns for protection against hyenas at night.

Dassanech girls are circumcised quite young, at the age of 10 or 12. They must go through this process, which is normally administered by their mother or another older woman, in order to marry and for their father to receive his payment. Payment for a bride is made to her father in kilograms of honey, cows, coffee, goat & chicken. Until they are circumcised, the young girls are considered ‘wild animals’ or ‘men’ to tease them. The reason for this is that their clitoris has to be removed before they act like women.

The most significant ceremony in a man’s life is called Dimi. Its carried out and celebrated to signify his daughter for fertility and future marriage. Once a man has gone through Dimi celebration he is them considered an elder of importance. About 10 cattle and 25 goat are slaughtered and other livestock traded for coffee. Men and women dress in animal fur capes to feast and dance, and the elders of the village bless the daughter, who will soon bare more children of the tribe.

Cattle are of great importance to the Dassanech people. They are a symbol of wealth, strength and power in the region. Not to mention a vital source of milk, food, clothing & blood – which is used to drink during serious seasonal drought.

Mago National Park is one of the National Parks of Ethiopia. Located in the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples’ Region about 782 kilometers south of Addis Ababa and north of a large 90° bend in the Omo River, the 2162 square kilometers of this park are divided by the Mago River, a tributary of the Omo, into two parts.

To the west is the Tama Wildlife Reserve, with the Tama river defining the boundary between the two. To the south is the Murle Controlled Hunting Area, distinguished by Lake Dipa which stretches along the left side of the lower Omo. The park office is 115 kilometers north of Omorate and 26 kilometers southwest of Jinka. All roads to and from the park are unpaved.

sof omar is 120km east from Goba is one of the most spectacular and extensive cavern in the world. Created by the Weib River in the limestone rock, the caves are extraordinary natural phenomena on a place of breath taking beauty. Great caverns have been carved out of the rock creating soaring underground chambers.

The cave, now an important shrine named after the saintly Sheikh Sof Omar, have a religious history that predates the arrival of the Muslim in Bale- a history calibrated in thousands not hundreds, of years.

The most celebrated residents of south Omo are undoubtedly the Mursi tribe! Their ways are beyond anything you could ever comprehend. Known best for their lip plates, the Mursi’s live simply, beyond the Mago National Park in huts and small communities. They are nomads and forever moving from village to village.

The Hamar occupy a mountainous region in the eastern part of the lower Omo Valley. Their name is also spelled Hamer. The “Jumping the bull” ceremony is the most spectacular rite of passage in Southern Ethiopia. This ceremony marks the initiation of young men in to adult hood. The main players are the initiates, those who are going to jump the bulls and the maz, those recently initiated who have already undergone this rite.

The initiate boys are required to jump in to the backs of formidable obstacle jump down on to the other side and then repeat the entire procedure on the day after the “jumping the bull” ceremony, women gather together, beautifully attired in their bedded skins and iron jeweler. Hammer women wear their hair in dense ringlets smeared with mud and clarified butter4 and topped off with a head featuring oblongs of gleaming aluminum courtship daces follow and continue for the following two days and night.