Daasanach Tribe
Hello: Komesab

The Daasanach live in the much drier, harsher conditions around Southern Ethiopia, Kenya around the Lake Turkana region and South Sudan.

We visited two Daasanach villages near the Kenyan border. The first was the Akudunguli, a moderately large village of about 2,000 tribes people built in the dust. The bones of animals were scattered on the ground amongst the distinctive low-domed huts covered with corrugated metal. The land was arid and hard to grow food on, but the Government has recently helped put pumps in to bring water up from the Omo river for farming. Now they grow barley, sorghum and maize.

Nearby was the Berqonich Rate (pronounced Rati) a much smaller village with an interesting organisational structure where we met 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 who could lead.

There was a more evident presence of Christian religion and missionaries around this village, but traditional practices were still very much visible in both. The women wear colourful necklaces, put ochre in their hair and body scarring is practiced by both men and women. With the Daasanach it also possible to tell a woman’s marital status by her haircut - parted and worn in a bob signifying she’s married.