OUR AMAZING DAY WITH THE HAMAR PEOPLE

WEATHER: Wet to start with but then fined up in the afternoon 25C

HIGHTLIGHT OF THE DAY: Seeing a Hamar ceremony for a bull jumping event

BUMMER OF THE DAY: Can’t think of a single thing

BUYS OF THE DAY: My shout at a local bar for 8 beers was only 5.80AUD!!!!

WORD OF THE DAY: I’m off to the Bakery

We were to see 2 tribes today.  That of the Karo people who live on the banks of the Omo River and we were in luck today, that there is a Hamar Ceremony for a bull jumping event in a week’s time and we have been allowed to attend this very special occasion this afternoon. 

So up at 6.15am for a 7am breakfast and on the road at 7.30am heading to the Karo Tribe.  Today we had Lemma at the wheel and we were in car number 4.  The ducks love Lemma as he is also a bird enthusiast and is more than happy to stop at bird sightings and use the duck binoculars to help with the identifying.  The Karo tribe is known for their body painting and also their scarification.  We only had to travel 63km one way but it took us just under 2.5 hours to cover that distance.  The roads in sections were only accessible via 4WD and the rest was on rocky and sandy roads.  It was slow going, but I sometimes don’t mind this as it gives you a chance to have good look around.  There were a lot of birds on this section of the drive, to which the old ducks were very excited about, but there were also these MASSIVE termite mounds for most of the drive as well.  They were well over 5-6m tall and some of them were over taking the trees.  They were amazing natural structures!!!

The village was located on the top of a cliff face that had million dollar views of the Omo River in a bend – it really was a sensational view and we were lucky that we were the first tourist group of the day, so we got pictures of the people ( which we paid for) and of the village.  We all broke up and got given an hour to walk around, talk to the tribe and just soak in another tribe that also has nothing to do with the outside world bar the farangees coming in each day.  So of the body painting was a little scary to say the least, there was one guy that looked like a skeleton and Josephine and I saw him together for the first time and said you wouldn’t want to run into him on a dark night, he really looked terrifying!  There are only around 2000 Karo people left, and they were a very beautiful tribe.  The women were stunning and they had used the elephant foot flowers to make crowns to wear and another distinctive feature of the Karo people is that they have their chin pierced and wear flowers, nails anything that will fit through the hole as decoration.  They weren’t as pushy as the Hamar and the Mursi but there was certainly no free photos unless you could sneak them in when they weren’t looking, which is rare, they are all over the photography and pretty switched on to all the tricks of the trade!  They also have shorter hair but use the clay to protect their hair and bodies and also have that red colour to them. So after an hour at the village, as we were leaving more tourist groups were arriving, so maybe they do get more contact with the outside world than previously thought, but at least we had arrived first and beat the other companies.  So we drove for the 2.5 hours back to camp where we had lunch waiting for us and free time for a few hours before heading to the Hamar ceremony.

The drivers went and played some soccer on the dry river bed with some local people, so I went and watched for a while and then thought I better get some blog writing done so I was sitting at the table in the communal area and I heard Lemma call out to us all to come and have a look at the river, there was water coming.  I had Massimo with me and we got up straight away and we walked the 50m to the river bank and it was like a mini tsunami coming down the dry river bed.  Because of all the rain that we had over the last 24 hours had finally caught up and this water was coming all the way from Jinka 60km away. It literally was a wave of water coming down the dry bed and it was moving quite fast.  All I could think of was that the guys were playing soccer there only 30 minutes before and we were in the river bed yesterday having a look around not even thinking that 24 hours later it would be full of rushing water.   You can see how quick and swift a tsunami would be, based on what we saw, one minute it was dry the next there was a torrent of water rushing past us and it was getting higher by the minute.  It really was a phenomenon and something I hope I am not on the wrong end of if I am ever to see anything like it in my lifetime again.  We had one of the guys John caught down on the bend of the river, so I think he must have been walking when he saw the water coming and ran for the bank.  Talking to Lemma he knew something wasn’t right and heard the water and said that he also felt a cool change /breeze as well before he actually saw the water coming too.  It was a freak natural occurrence.

So at 2.30pm we left camp and only had to drive 10 minutes to the village where we were to watch the ceremony that precedes the actual Bull Jumping event by a few days, sometimes a week prior.  We met our guide at this time for the next 3 days Gilley, a young fella who was born in the village and hopes to become an eye doctor when he finishes school to help the woman in the community.  As they use the wet red clay for their hair, it runs into their eyes and causes an eye disease in them as they get older.  So is a ridgy didge Hamer person and he was good to have around to ask a lot, and I mean a lot of questions.

Bull Jumping ceremony is the most dramatic and significant ritual, which represent a life-changing event for the young man who passes from boyhood into early adulthood. First the boy to be initiated delivers invitations to his neighbors in the form of blade of dried grass knotted in several places. These knots are a calendar of days and each day the guest must untie one of the knots until the day of the ceremony arrives. 

Each young man undergoes an individual ceremony. On the first day several hundred guests gather, among them the Maz (who are still single and have recently gone through the ceremony) who arrive in a long line decorated with feathers, necklaces, and bracelets and carrying long thin, flexible branches which will be used as whips. They participate in a coffee-drinking ceremony, which is regarded as a blessing.   The ceremony is a preparation for what is one of the most important events in a male Hamer’s life and it is an event called the Bull Jumping.  The ceremony is done 5-6 days in advance with the whole village and family all getting together to prepare the food and the alcohol all the while singing songs about the young man doing the leap and all the good things in his life.  For us to attend we donate money that goes directly to the family, so they get something out of it sand it also gave us free reign to take as many pictures as we wanted.  So when we got there the place was buzzing and the first thing we saw were jumping men in a semi-circle.  There would have been over 30 of them all singing and clapping and then 4-5 of them would stand in the middle of the circle and jump up and down like a Masai jump to give you an idea.  There were a few women on the other side of the circle and they would come in every now and then and the men would chase them out of the circle after they had finished jumping.  It was AMAZING to see and I rekon I stood there and watch this for over 20 minutes, with them doing exactly the same thing each time.  It was a hive of activity.  Just behind the jumping men was a temporary shelter made from tree branches and leaves the size of a half tennis court and there were woman on one end of the shelter in a row, crushing sorghum and singing in a rhythmic motion, while the elders of the village looked after the children while all this was going on.  They were all sipping coffee from these huge nuts, which I can’t remember the name of and everyone was just working in harmony getting ready for the big party.  There were men down the other end of the shelter preparing and making sorghum beer to which we tried some of the alcoholic sorghum that was offered by one of the older gentleman, and not wanting to offend his I tasted a tiny piece of the grey mushy matter, which wasn’t pleasant but it wasn’t disgusting either.

There was one pint when one of the older men walked past me and slapped me on the arse as he went by.  Zeme saw this and said something to Gilly.  I wasn’t offended at all, we are after all guests at their ceremony, but Gilley and Zeme wouldn’t let it rest and 10 minutes later the old codge came over and click clicked a sorry to me, which was embarrassing accepted.  Gilly said while I was in his care, he should be looking after us and that it wasn’t acceptable, so it was sweet when he put it like that.

Besides the dancing men the other thing that stood out for me was the whipping of the single women. The maza are also responsible for a ritual which precedes the main cattle jump. The women of the village (and in particular, the would-be jumper's sisters) purposefully provoke the maza into lashing their bare backs with sticks which inflict raw, open wounds and scar them for life. However, these wounds are seen as the mark of a true Hamar woman, and all the village's women participate.

Their main responsibility is to help the initiate during the rituals of preparation prior to jumping, but they are also mandated to participate with him in various ways in the initiation ceremony itself. An early task, for which only the Maz are ritually qualified, involves whipping the novice's young female relatives. The young women of the Ukuli family highly decorated their hair and bodies covered with grease (usually butter); dancing and singing in circles, beg to be chastised by the Maz since in this way they can demonstrate the strength of their devotion to the boy. The more abundant and extensive the scars, the deeper the girls' affection to the boy who is about to become a man.  It was amazing to watch all these young woman vying for a position for the Maz to whip them and we aren’t talking about just tap on the back, he rounded that arm and got full force into his swing with a long thin branch.  The women wouldn’t even flinch when they were hit and they would push and shove each other out of the way so that they could be next.  Sometimes the jostling would get too much for the Maz aka whipper and he would have to run away and he would have 10-15 woman chasing him wanting to be whipped.  Even when we weren’t watching that particular ritual, which is going on at the same time as the dancing men and woman, you can just hear that whip making contact on skin and it is just such a foreign sound to our ears.

It was weird to be given free reign while we were there to take photos.  There were woman getting ready in tying these bells the size of .50c pieces around their legs just under their knees and then they would dance in a circle like around an imaginary fire and them all jump up and down in a tight circle at the end to them do it all again, with whistles and horns blowing with the bells on the knees all clanging it was pretty awesome to also watch this.  Keeping in mind all this was happening at the same time as everything else, and I just kept walking around the whole proceedings not believing that I was actually experiencing something so sacred.  Minaloo said he probably sees one of these ceremonies twice a year, so it isn’t like it happens all the time, so we really were quite lucky we were there.  There is also more good news that there is an actual bull leaping event happening tomorrow and that we had an opportunity to go and see that if we wanted to.  Um hell yes.  It was to cost is 300 birr (17AUD) but this was also a great and rare opportunity and to get a ceremony and a bull leap was just about unheard of. 

So after sitting under the make shift shelter and trying some of the local coffee from the big nit, which tasted like tea we headed back to camp after an unforgettable couple of hours with the Hamar people and a tradition that has not changed and that we were accepted willingly (even though we paid it only went to the family not to all the other people) it was AWESOME.  The sights and sounds was something I will never forget and it was an amazing experience and we were so lucky were there and permitted to be able to watch it all.  This has been one of the highlight of my trip so far. 

What an awesome way to finish an awesome day.  One thing that does work against Ethiopia is that their drinks are rarely cold.  The camp doesn’t turn on it’s generate till 7pm, so the beers are in the fridge, but there is just no power to keep them cold during the day.   Minaloo knew how desperate we were for a cold beer, so after dinner Zeme, Cook, Minaloo and I went for a drive into town to the ‘bakery’ to buy some ‘bread’ for breakfast tomorrow.  So on the way we stopped for a COLD beer that turned into 4 and a few moves on the small dance floor before heading back to camp just before midnight, without any bread can you believe there was none left!  Who would have thought?  We made good time as just after we got back the heavens opened up and it rained for most of the night again for the second time in a row.