Photographing The Tribes of the Omo Valley, Ethiopia (2023)
Ethiopia wasn’t high on my list of places to visit and in the end that's probably why I went. In my head it was famine and Band Aid but I’ve found doing things for which I have few or outdated assumptions opens you to the most unexpected experiences. I wasn’t disappointed and I found a land that was fertile in food, culture and happiness.
I arrived in Addis Ababa on a cool January morning and met with the photographer who organised the trip, our tour operator and a chef. We loaded a 4x4 jeep and began a 2,700km journey round Southern Ethiopia to spend time with and photograph the tribes of the Omo Valley.
The first stop was the hills of the Upper Omo after 2 days of driving and long after the tarmac ran out. Our home for 3 nights was a small campsite in a clearing by a stream just 20km from the South Sudan border as guests of the Suri tribe.
Campsite with the Suri near the South Sudan border
The Suri are remarkable. They grow crops and wealth is measured in cattle. Polygamy is the norm - as it was with many of the tribes we visited - and ancient traditions like wearing plates through the lower lip and ears are still practised. Both men and women wear ear plates, but it’s just the women who wear a lip plate, often having their lower front teeth removed when they’re young to make room. Men and women also scar their bodies, traditionally using a thorn, but these days with a razor blade if one is available. Whilst the practice of wearing a lip plate is fading among the younger generations, body scarring is still practised widely.
An evening spent around a campfire listening to the men sing and tell stories - while the village chief holds forth with strong liquor and a loud trumpet - are enough to remind you that you don’t need much in life to be happy and community is everything.
By any standard, life in the Omo is hard. There are no modern conveniences, they only eat what they grow or kill and without access to basic medicines like antibiotics, getting sick can be life threatening. Yet the Suri are some of the friendliest, happiest people I’ve ever met, and they love being photographed.
They enthusiastically painted their faces, dreamed up stunning floral headdresses and possess an astonishing ability to look straight down the barrel of a camera lens. Most of the portraits on display are from my time with the Suri, and it would have been easy to do an entire collection just based on them, but other tribes are represented as well.
We decamped from the Suri, crossing the Omo National Park and making our way to a dusty two-road town called Turmi. From here we did day trips out to the nearby tribes with names like Kara, Daasanach, Hamer and Mursi. Each tribe had it’s own unique character, from the way they built their huts to how to know someone’s marital status: hairstyles, necklaces and body scarring - each with their own flourish.
During our time in Turmi we attended a Hamer bull-jumping ceremony; a coming of age event in which a young man must leap over the backs of several large bulls to mark his transition to manhood and his right to marry. Ahead of the event some of the tribeswomen demand to be whipped with switches in a form of consensual violence to show their devotion. This creates scarring on their backs that are worn as a badge of honour and a show of loyalty.
Young man preparing to jump over bulls at a Hamer tribe coming of age ceremony
Watching these acts is challenging. Withholding judgement while filtering events and behaviours through a different set of beliefs creates inner conflict. It’s important that changes to tribal life come through education from within the tribes themselves, informed rather than imposed from views and moral values from the outside.
There are important ethical considerations too. It’s not uncommon to come across larger groups of tourists who go crashing into villages armed with cameras and cash in a kind of photographic hit-and-run (see my post on Photography, Ethics and the Omo Valley). If you choose to visit this phenomenal place and these incredible people, which I encourage you to do, it’s important to work with ethical operators who respect the tribes, engage in fair commercial transactions and approach tourism with sensitivity, empathy and a lot of love for the amazing people of this country.
We saw some evidence of the impact of education and changing tribal structures. When we visited one of the villages of the Daasanach tribe we were introduced to the female head of the village. A natural assumption in such a patriarchal society is that she derived her title from being married to the village chief, but in this case the male and female heads of the village are elected separately - she having acquired the title on the basis that she had some education, was a good speaker and was clearly a woman of stature and presence that could lead.
Mostly, we encountered more traditional ways of life. Visiting a Hamer village we had the very great privilege to meet a young bride. Upon arrival in her new home she was confined to her hut for 6 full months, every morning covering herself in an ochre body paste and not allowed to do any chores or work at all as the husband’s family looked after her. Her story and picture is included in the exhibition and stands apart from the other portrait shots.
In the end the collection on show is, to my mind, both beautiful and confronting. The physical transformations on display force us to consider our own notions of beauty and having some understanding of how these incredible people live, invites us to contemplate what wealth and happiness really are.
The part you can’t see is that a camera lens transforms the people in front of it - particularly the Suri. There was so much joy and laughter when we were with them and yet their expressions can be sober and piercing. But the camera transforms the people behind it as well and sometimes, if you’re lucky, the right picture, the right experience, creates a small but impactful shift that forever changes how you see the world.
Acacia tree at our lodge outside Jinka
I went to Ethiopia with photographer Jayne Mclean. You can get in touch with Jayne Mclean at her website below. I have no commercial tie to her, I just think she’s the right person to go with.