The last town before the Mago National Park and the Mursi — Omo Valley's most visited ethnic group and the thickest lip plates in Africa
Jinka is the administrative capital of South Omo Zone — the main town in the Omo Valley and the base for visiting the Mursi people of Mago National Park. The Mursi are perhaps the most photographed ethnic group in Africa: Mursi women wear clay lip plates (dhebi a tugoin) as marks of beauty and identity, enlarged year by year from adolescence. The Mursi and their Surma relatives to the west are the last groups in the Omo Valley to maintain the lip plate tradition at scale. Jinka's South Omo Research Centre and Museum has an excellent collection documenting all 16 ethnic groups of the valley. F…
The Mursi and their related Surma populations migrated to the Omo Valley from the Sudan borderland region within the last 500 years, part of a broader Nilotic southward movement. Their marginal position in the valley — the Mago lowlands are malarial and remote — allowed them to maintain cultural practices that other groups modified under missionary, government, and market pressure. Ethiopian government land allocation to commercial sugar and cotton cultivation in the Omo Valley has displaced Mursi families from their traditional territory, causing conflict that continues.