The Monday market of the Hamar people — cattle-hide clothing, copper jewellery, and the bull-jumping ceremony that marks adulthood in South Omo Valley
Turmi is a small market town in Ethiopia's South Omo Zone — the gateway to the Hamar people, one of the most visually distinct of the 16 ethnic groups in the Omo Valley. The weekly Monday market at Turmi brings Hamar women in cattle-hide skirts and copper jewellery alongside Banna, Karo, and Ari groups; it is one of the most ethnographically charged markets in Africa and has been drawing photographers and anthropologists since the 1970s. The Hamar bull-jumping ceremony — the initiation rite in which a young man must run across the backs of a line of cattle without falling, watched by female r…
The Omo Valley has been inhabited by Nilotic and Cushitic peoples who moved south from the Nile basin over millennia, producing extraordinary ethnic diversity in a small geographic area. The Lower Omo Valley is a UNESCO World Heritage site for its palaeontological significance — hominid fossils dating to 2.4 million years ago have been found at Kibish. The modern ethnic mosaic — Hamar, Mursi, Karo, Banna, Dassanech, Ari — represents the result of migrations, conflicts, and ecological adaptations over thousands of years. The Gilgel Gibe III hydroelectric dam (completed 2016) has significantly…