Itinerary
Arrival day in the wonderous land of Abyssinia. After arrival in Bole International Airport and taking care of passport control and luggage formalities, you will be met by our representative outside the arrivals hall and you will betransferred to your city. Here you will be met by your tour guide. You will have the opportunity to discuss our exciting adventure together in more detail.
Depending on the timings, we will embark on an Addis city tour this morning. Places of interest that we will visit includes; the Natural History Museum, which houses a replica of Lucy (in Ethiopia, known by her Amharic name of “Dinknesh” – you are wonderful). We will also visit the Merkato, the largest open-air market in Africa.
We will head back to Bole International Airport to check in for our flight to Jimma. This is the largest city in southwestern Ethiopia. It used to be the capital of the former Kaffa Province. This region is recognized as the home of the plant Coffea arabica, or coffee.
After breakfast, we will be continuing our southwest routing as we make our way to Mizan Teferi. The landscape on this drive is made up of a mosaic of forest and cultivated land dominated by coffee, tea and various spices, and we will have ample opportunity to stop and take advantage of any photographic opportunities we may arise.
Today is an exciting journey as we head deep into the little-visited portion of southwestern Ethiopia. En-route we will pass through Bebeka coffee plantation (located about 30km outside Mizan), which is the largest and oldest coffee plantation in Ethiopia. After passing through the town of Tulgit, we will finally arrive in Kibish, where we will be camping for the next three nights. Much of our focus today will be meeting the fabulous Suri people, who due to their remoteness are one of the least visited of the Omo Valley’s tribes.
The Suri are pastoralists, placing much value on their cattle, which they protect vigorously against theft from the neighboring tribes. However, The Surmaalso steal livestock from their enemies, and in recent times there has been more pressure on their grazing lands due to input of people from adjacent Sudan who have been displaced by civil war, resulting infrequent fighting in the area.
They do not make woodcarvings, statues etc., and instead are renowned for their incredibly ornate decoration of themselves, which they achieve through painting, scarification and adornment with flowers and other natural objects. The paintings are dynamic pieces of artworks, which vary greatly in design, and are truly fascinating to photograph!
Virtually no area of the body is left out, and nudeness is a standard and acceptable part of daily life for the Surma, who regard Westerners concept of clothing with fascination!
Suri women, like Mursi women, wear lip plates. In the early twenties, an unmarried girl’s lower lip will be pierced and then progressively stretched over the period of a year. A clay disc, which has its edge indented like a pulley wheel, is squeezed into the hole in the girl’s lip. As the lip stretches, a succession of ever-larger discs is forced in until the lip, now a loop, is so long such that it can sometimes be pulled right over the owner’s head! The size of the lip plate determines the bride price with a large one bringing in fifty heads of cattle. The women make the lip plates from clay, coloring them with ochre and charcoal and baking them in a fire.
We have two days to explore and photograph the fascinating Suri, making the most of our time in this remote region of Ethiopia.
Another unique component of Suri life is stick-fighting, known a Donga. We might be exceptionally fortunate to witness such a contest, but our local guide will keep an ear to the ground and with luck, we may be able to attend such an event. In the fight, each male contestant is armed with a hardwood pole about six feet long and with a weight of just less than two pounds.
Men paint their bodies with a mixture of chalk and water before the fight. In the attacking position, this pole is gripped at its base with both hands, the left above the right in order to give maximum swing and leverage. Either of the player beats his opponent with his stick as many times as possible with the intention of knocking him down, and eliminating him from the game. Players are normally unmarried men.
The hero is carried away on a platform of poles to a group of girls waiting at the side of the arena who decide among themselves which of them will ask for his hand in marriage. Taking part in the stick fight is considered to be more important than winning it.
We have two days to explore and photograph the fascinating Suri, making the most of our time in this remote region of Ethiopia.
Another unique component of Suri life is stick-fighting, known a Donga. We might be exceptionally fortunate to witness such a contest, but our local guide will keep an ear to the ground and with luck, we may be able to attend such an event. In the fight, each male contestant is armed with a hardwood pole about six feet long and with a weight of just less than two pounds.
Men paint their bodies with a mixture of chalk and water before the fight. In the attacking position, this pole is gripped at its base with both hands, the left above the right in order to give maximum swing and leverage. Either of the player beats his opponent with his stick as many times as possible with the intention of knocking him down, and eliminating him from the game. Players are normally unmarried men.
The hero is carried away on a platform of poles to a group of girls waiting at the side of the arena who decide among themselves which of them will ask for his hand in marriage. Taking part in the stick fight is considered to be more important than winning it.
Around 8:30am, we drive from Kibish to Kakuta, a remote and rarely visited tribal area which is home to the Nyangatom. They are said to be descendants of the Toposa tribe in South Sudan. We arrive here around midday and in the afternoon, we visit a village of the Nyangatom tribe. Here, we will get opportunities to photograph the tribe, who live in a climatically challenging area of the Omo (very arid). The women wear numerous strands of beads.
The tribal adornment is an integral part of their culture. The area is semi-arid and water has to be fetched from rivers each day. We camp for the overnight stay in Kakuta. 105kms / 6 hours driving because of the tough road. We will provide lunch boxes to create time to photographs in the villages.
Later, we drive to Turmi for Overnight.
Today we start early to Arbore village for the morning suasion.
Arbore interchangeable known as Ulde or Erbore is a tribe which live in southern region of Ethiopia. They inhabit the area near the Lake Chew Bahir, Omo Valley. They live in dry and fertile places and are primarily animal farmers; like most other tribes in the Omo Valley. Livestock is the primary source of income and a sign of prestige. wealth is determined by the number of cattle kept by a tribe member.
In this tribe, girls who are not married cut their hair entirely, this sign of virginity is a piece of dark clothing on them to cover themselves against the sun, while married women wear short ties on their hair; at last, the men of the tribe wear a white cloth to cover their heads.
Arbore women wear decorative items: beaded earrings, necklaces and bracelets are characteristic of this tribe. They believe that ornaments are essential in making them more attractive and that even leather skirts are decorated with beads and decoration.
Afterward, we will drive back to Turmi where you will visit the Hammer tribe in the afternoon.
The Hamar is one of the most well-known tribes in Southern Ethiopia. They inhabit the territory east of the Omo River and have settlements in both Turmi and Dimeka.
They are specifically well known for their unique rituals, including a cattle-leaping ceremony that the young men have to undergo in order to reach adulthood and to marry. They are a highly ‘superstitious’ people, and to this date, they consider twins to be babies born outside of wedlock, while those children whose upper milk teeth develop before their lower teeth are judged to be ‘evil’ or ‘unclean’.
Due to this reason, such children are discarded in the bush and simply left to die, as they would rather lose a single child than inflict any disaster upon their community. The Hamar people are also re-known for one of the most bizarre rituals on Earth. This is when the women offer themselves to be whipped by the male members of their family as a symbol of their love! The scars from such encounters are conspicuously evident on the bodies of all Hamar women.
These women take great pride in their appearance.They wear traditional dresses consisting of a brown goat-skin skirt adorned with dense vertical rows of red and yellow beads.
Their hair is characteristically tied in dense ringlets with butterfat mixed with red ochre. They also wear several bracelets and necklaces fashioned of beads or metal, depending on their age, marital status and wealth. The men wear woven cloth wrapped around the waist and most elders wear delicately colored clay head caps that are fashioned into their hair and adorned with an ostrich feather.
As stated before, the young Hamar men are famous for their “Evangadi dance” and “bull jumping” ceremony. The ritual entails young men who wish to marry jumping over a line of bulls, thereby proving their worth to their intended bride’s family. It also marks their advent into adulthood. This is a rarely seen ceremony.However, with luck, we might hear of, and even be invited to attend this landmark event.
The Lower Omo Valley is located within Africa’s famous and, geologically speaking, rapidly expanding Great Rift Valley. Here, in south-west Ethiopia’s awkwardly named “Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People’s Region”, bordering Kenya and Sudan. The great Omo River dominates this dry savanna valley, resulting in some of Africa’s most well developed and best preserved arid-zone riverine forests.
The Omo River rises from the Shewan highlands. It flows 470 miles (750km), mostly southwards, before entering Lake Turkana near the Kenyan border. Lake Turkana, the world’s largest permanent desert lake and also the planet’s largest alkaline lake, has no outlet.In that case, it becomes a dead-end for the Omo River. The importance of the Lower Omo Valley has been recognized by UNESCO, which has declared it as a cultural World Heritage site. It also contains two massive national parks and several important birding areas.
Our visitation today is the Karo tribe, another tribe known for its elaborate body and facial paintings. This tribe live along the east bank of the Omo River and practice flood retreat cultivation, their main crops being corns, beansand sorghum. Unlike the other tribes, this tribe keep only a small number of cattle due to the prevalence of tsetse flies. Like most of the tribes in the Omo, they paint their bodies and faces with white chalk to prepare for any ceremony. The chalk is mixed with yellow rock,charcoal, and red iron ore to make its requisite color. Facemasks are worn at times, and they have clay hair buns, adorned with feathers.
Scarification is also an important part in the Karo peoples’ lives. This includes the complete scarification of a man’s chest which is to declare that he has killed an enemy or dangerous animal (Amongst the Karo, killing one’s enemies isn’t viewed as an act of murder, but as an act of honor!).
The scarification process involves lightly slicing the skin with knives or razor blades and then rubbing ash into the open wounds to produce a permanently raised effect. The women have decoratively-scarred abdomens, which are considered sensual and very desirable.
In the afternoon we will drive back to the nearby Hamar Village to continue photographing this fascinating tribe in all her glory!
More time will be spent visiting the Hamar today, where we will get more opportunities to capture these interesting people, before later continuing onward to Jinka, where we will be staying for the night.
An early morning start will take us to Mago National Park at 06:00am in order to reach the Mursi Tribe while the light is still fine. Mostly famous for the clay lip plates that the women insert in their lower lips, the Mursi are one of the last tribes in Africa, whom it is still the norm for women to wear these large pottery or wooden discs or plates!
The lip plates (dhebi a tugoin) have become the chief visible distinguishing characteristic of the fascinating Mursi people. A girl’s lower lip is cut, in most cases by her mother, or another woman of her settlement, when she reaches the age of 15 or 16. The cut is then kept open by a wooden plug until the wound heals. It is the decision of the individual girl to decide how far to stretch the lip, which she does by inserting progressively larger plugs over several months. Some will even persevere until their lips can take plates of 5 inches (12 cm) or more in diameter!
The Mursi and their neighborswere registered as part of the Ethiopian State in the final years of the 19th century, when Emperor Menelik II established full control over the southwestern lowlands bordering Kenya and Sudan.
This was an area occupied by several small tribes with fluid identities, highly adaptable to environmental conditions and capable of easily absorbing outsiders into their communities. The Mursi are the product of a large-scale migratory movement of cattle herding peoples in the general direction of the Ethiopian highlands. Three separate movements might be distinguished in the recent history of the Mursi, each the result of growing environmental pressure associated with the drying out of the Omo basin over the last 150 – 200 years.
They attribute overwhelming cultural importance to cattle. Almost every important social relationships – particularly marriages – are marked and authenticated by exchanging cattle. The dowry, (“Bride wealth”), (ideally consisting of 38 head of cattle) is handed over by the groom’s family to the bride’s father, who must meet the requirements of a wide range of relatives from different clans. This makes it certain that cattle are continually redistributed around the community, thereby helping to provide for the long-term economic security of individuals as well as their families.
After the morning photographic session for the Mursi, our incredible time in the lower Omo Valley comes to an end. We drive northeast back to Arba Minch. Enroute we can stop at Konso, a small town famed for its amazing terraces and agriculture, and recognized as an UNESCO World Heritage Site (declared in 2011).
This Konso tribe migrated into this area thousands of years ago, and from these stone-age beginnings, their remarkable culture developed in virtual isolation. They have lived a largely independent existence, rarely involving themselves in trade with other communities, and have defended their land fiercely. Their defensive walls will be evident when we visit one of their walled villages. A community guide who will explain and demonstrate the fascinating lifestyle, beliefs and traditions of these industrious people, will guide us through this experience. We return to Arba Minch and to our now familiar accommodations.
Depending on your flight back home, we will depart Arba Minch to connect with our scheduled morning flight back to Addis Ababa.
Fly out back home having experienced our diversified culture!
Min 2 pax