Cover photograph
Lonely Planet, Ethiopia & Djibouti, 6th edition, 2017.
David Schweitzer/Getty Images ©

Ethiopia’s lower Omo Valley, East Africa. Elegantly adorned with copper bracelets and glass-beaded goatskin clothing, juxtaposed against a freshly painted wall in Turmi - a small multi-ethnic frontier town in the remote Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Region of Ethiopia.

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Peoples of the Omo Valley

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Peul (Fulani, Fulbe, Fula) noblewoman with tattooed lips and gold earrings - semi-nomadic pastoral settlement in the Hombori region of central Mali. High resolution Noritsu Koki film scan, Asahi Pentax SP Spotmatic, (SMC Pentax Zoom 45~125mm f/4), circa 1976.

Peul women of this region often tattoo their lips, gums and the area around the mouth before marriage, a painful aesthetic practice and rite of passage signifying marital status.

The extravagant gold earrings or "kwottenai kanye" symbolize the wealth and prestige of a husband or family based largely on the ownership of cattle among the semi-nomadic pastoral Peul of this region. They are also an aesthetic symbol of cultural pride and identity, usually passed on as a gift from a husband to his wife or an heirloom to a daughter on the death of her mother.

The large earrings are made by local smiths or artisans concentrated mostly in the Mopti region of central Mali. They are crafted from a 14-karat bar of gold that is first chiseled and heated over a fire, then hammered into thin blades and twisted into a four-lobe shape.

This proud and elegant Peul woman is likely from the class of “free nobles” (mostly herders, religious and political leaders, some cultivators) at the top of a highly stratified Peul society. Ethnographers distinguish this class from lower-tiered occupational groups or “castes” (griot story tellers and song-praisers, artisans, blacksmiths, potters, woodworkers ) and former slaves (labourers, brick makers, house builders).

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Sambeke, a proud Maasai herder (warrior age-set), comes from a small pastoral settlement nestled in the Kenyan foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro (near Amboseli National Park, Rift Valley Province).

He travels each year to the island of Lamu off Keyna’s Swahili Coast to work as a security guard. The money he earns goes towards the upkeep of his family and cattle back in the homeland.

Elegently adorned with glass-beaded collars and stretched earlobes with glass-beaded sleeves.

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Mursi mother with ornamental clay lip-plate, wild boar's tusk, facial chalk markings, and decorated goat-skin clothing - pastoral settlement in southern Ethiopia's lower Omo Valley.

On the meaning of lip-plates in Mursi culture and society
The Mursi are one of the last groups in Africa where women still wear large wooden or clay plates in their lower lips. Most Mursi women wear lip-plates as an aesthetic symbol of cultural pride and identity, signifying passage to womanhood/adulthood. They are more frequently worn by unmarried or newly wed women and are generally worn when serving men food or during important ritual events (weddings, men's duelling competitions, communal dances, safari photo-ops).

Debunking popular myths
Contrary to popular opinion among travellers and other passing strangers, ethnographers found little or no connection between the size of a woman’s lip-plate and the size of her bridewealth (cattle, guns).

Anthropologists and ethnographers have debunked another popular myth surrounding the lip-plate in this region. They found no evidence that the labret originated as a deliberate attempt to disfigure and make women less attractive to slave traders, yet this myth seems to surface regularly in accounts by professional and amateur photographers, tourists, and bloggers alike.

The Mursi and Mursiland
The Mursi are semi-nomadic farmers and herders who depend on shifting hoe-cultivation (mostly drought-resistant varieties of sorghum) and cattle herding for their livelihood. They number less than ten thousand today.

Most Mursi live in small settlements dispersed across Mursiland, a remote territory of about thirty by eighty kilometres between the Omo and Mago Rivers in southwestern Ethiopia, near the border with South Sudan and northern Kenya.

The terrain varies from a volcanic plain dominated by a range of hills and a major watershed to a riverine forest, wooded grasslands and thorny bushland thickets. The climate is harsh and unstable with low rainfall and daily temperatures regularly exceeding 40°C in the shade during the dry season.

~~~
"To possess the world in the form of images is, precisely, to re-experience the unreality and remoteness of the the real." Susan Sontag, On Photography

Excellent ethnographic accounts on the meaning of lip-plates in Mursi culture and society include:
David Turton, "Lip plates and the people who take photographs: uneasy encounters between Mursi and tourists in southern Ethiopia", Anthropology Today, 20:3, 3-8, 2004.
Shauna Latosky, "Reflections on the lip-plates of Mursi women as a source of stigma and self-esteem", in Ivo Strecker and Jean Lydall (eds.) The perils of face: Essays on cultural contact, respect and self-esteem in southern Ethiopia, Mainzer Beiträge zur Afrika-Forschung, Lit Verlag, Berlin, 2006, pp. 371-386.

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Returning the photographer's gaze - sometimes with a proud and knowing smile, an indignant look of resistance and mimicry, or a long studied stare as the observer becomes the observed. The gaze is returned, the observer othered. Subject owns the gaze for a frozen moment.

Saitoti, a Maasai elder, travels each year from his home in a small semi-nomadic pastoral settlement nestled in the Kenyan foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro (near Amboseli National Park and the border with Tanzania, Rift Valley Province) to work as a security guard in Lamu, an island off Kenya's northern Swahili Coast. The money he earns goes towards the upkeep of his family and cattle back in the homeland.

Adorned with circular facial scars, a glass-beaded collar, and stretched earlobes with glass-beaded sleeves and copper pendants.

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