Swahili spectators at a traditional stick fight in Shela, a small fishing settlement on the island of Lamu off Kenya's northern Swahili Coast.

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Shadow lines extend from Mohammed's kofia (traditional Swahili hat) as he waits with his sisters under a noonday equator sun for the start of the popular donkey races organized along the breezy dockside of Lamu Town, a major Swahili settlement on the island of Lamu off Kenya's northern Swahili Coast.

The traditional black niqab or viel and long black bui-bui garment with subtle decorative alterations are often worn by young unmarried Swahili women at festivals and public events, sometimes as a nuanced fashion statement if not for protection from flirtatious boys.

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A generous Swahili child kindly shares her bag of mixed nuts - not begging - during an a late afternoon stroll through the back streets of Mombasa's Stone Town, Swahili Coast, Kenya.

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Party time! A late-afternoon communal dance in a small Kara settlement (Korcho) set high on a fertile east bank of southern Ethiopia's lower Omo River. Adorned with finger-painted white-chalk body markings, glass-bead necklaces, and clay hair buns with ostrich feathers.

The essential life-sustaining Omo River is situated (out of sight) below the edge of a steep riverbank in the backdrop. The Nyangatom (past enemies, current allies) are established on other side of the river. The river carves a hard winding course south through the volcanic-rock floor of the Great Rift Valley for another 50-60 kilometres before pouring into Lake Turkana at the border with Kenya.

This photograph pays homage to the extraordinary analog images of the peoples of East Africa that appear in the seminal book Vanishing Africa, published in 1971 by eminent Africanist and social documentary photographer, Mirella Ricciardi.

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Peoples of the Omo Valley


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An elderly Hamar woman with cane at the weekly market in Turmi, a small multi-ethnic frontier town in the remote Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Region of Ethiopia, East Africa. Adorned with seeded necklaces, brass bracelets, and goatskin clothing.

The Hamar are semi-nomadic herders and farmers who live in small settlements or hamlets scattered across the hills, plains, wooded riverines, and dry thorny bush terrain in Ethiopia's lower Omo Valley, near the border with northern Kenya and South Sudan. explore#133

© National Geographic Yourshot (Editor's Favourite, August 2018). Story and assignment: “Rethinking Portraiture.”

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Peoples of the Omo Valley

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