Ethiopia : The Hamer People (also spelled Hamar) of the Omo Valley
Hamer people are a community inhabiting southwestern Ethiopia. The vast majority (99.13%) live in Hamer woreda (or district), a fertile part of the Omo River valley, in the Debub Omo Zone of the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples Region (SNNPR). They are largely pastoralists, so their culture places a high value on cattle. The 2003 national census reported 46,532 people in this ethnic group, of whom 10000 were urban inhabitants.
The Hamer are known for their unique "comming of age" custom of "bull jumping," which initiates a boy into manhood. First, in the preparations for this ceremony, female relatives and female friends (especially those who are secretly in love with the young man ) dance and invite terrible whipping with a switch ( a thin branch ) from young men, close friends of the initiate, who have recently been initiated themselves; this gives the women the opportunity to demonstrate their love for and support of the initiate, and their scars, which they will proudly be display for life, give them a say on who he will marry, among other things. During this ritual, but very real whipping, these women, from older adolescents to very much older aunts and grandmothers will never complain or show their pain, this again, as an expression of their unwavering love for the young man.
The actual initiation : The boy must run naked back and forth twice across the backs of a row of of seven or 10 bulls while his best friends hold the bulls in place, but he is ridiculed if he falls or otherwise fails. If he really wants to show off his courage he might do three or four passages.
Unfortunately we have here very few photos of the ritual itself, as that was the main part of our shoot, it was necessary for me, as field producer to be very attentive to the needs of the crew filming. What we propose here are mostly photos of from the daily life of the very beautiful Hamer people.
Another interesting custom is that they drink coffee, as it grows naturally here, but they roast and boil only the husks of the coffee beans to make their coffee. ( I can't remember what they might use the coffee beans themselves for ! Perhaps they use them only to sell ! ) However, if a person is in need of the elders' blessings before some venture, such as a long voyage or some kind of challenging undertaking, he will meet with the village elders in the chief's hut and the elders will pass from one to the next a calabash filled with coffee : each elder will pronounce a short blessing and then take a mouthful of this coffee and spit it in the face of the person being blessed.
