28.4.10

Dasanech and Hamer 14/03/10

Today we drove towards Omorate to visit a Dasanech village. The road towards the Omo river is surrounded by a thick acacia bushland, very thick, basically it is impossible to see farther then 5 mtrs. Plenty of Dik Diks along the road and even two Gerenuk appeared briefly on the side of the road. In the distance we also saw Red naped bush shrike and Northern carmine bee eater.

Getting closer to the river we met the two first Dasanech girls, they are also bare-chested but they have many necklaces with much bigger beads

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They are bringing water and are a bit less friendly then the people we met so far. They are young and again very beautiful but this is something we could say of most of the people we met

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We reach the river, 70 mtrs wide stream of muddy water, we cross it on a dugout canoe that it is everything but straight. Anyway we made it through and we walked towards Rate, the Dasanech village. We discussed with the people and we agreed to pay a fee to the village to be able to take pictures without paying individuals.

The village is a dustbowl close to the river, huts covered with skins, elevated stores to keep the food, tens of women of all ages and kids everywhere. Few man are playing bao close by

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The old women are all decorated with complicated head pieces made of old Japanese watches metal bits and feathers, one of them is wrapped in a big serval skin

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Their faces with all the lines of age are telling stories that we cannot read.

Many women bear decorative scarifications on the arms, they are bare-chested and the quantity of colourful necklaces is unbelievable

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Some of them wear a sort of hat made of leather with the edge decorated with all sort of metal parts form soda caps to AK 47 cartridges, we soon learnt that the hat is when wrapped on the head but is used as dancing skirt once unwrapped

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After a couple of hours we head back and cross the river again, we met a man with a very very complicated hair decoration made of coloured ochre and ostrich feather, only now we fully understand why they use the borkoto (stool) as a pillow

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Back to Turme we enjoy a good meal and wait 4 in the afternoon to visit an Hamer village.

We reach the first and made the same agreement for pics through the local guide with the elders, we enter the village and start taking pictures and observing life. The huts are much more heavily built then the Dasanech ones , the women differently dressed and decorated with the goat skin partially covering the breasts and the iron rings on neck, wrists and ankles

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One girls bears the scars of the whip, her brother managed to jump all the bulls and che asked to be whipped to demonstrate her love for him. After few minutes came out the chief of the village, he is drunk, he started shouting to the guide, then he came to greet us in a gentle way and went on again shouting to the guide. We decide to move and so we went to another village. We waited the people to come back from the fields and we spent time with them in the golden light of the late afternoon.

Married women with their heavy iron rings tease each other in a constant muttering.

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Young unmarried girls all beads and shells, constantly worry about their beauty and react much stronger and faster to the sharp words of the laughing older women

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Women's body is rubbed with red ochre as the hairs, they are gentle and beautiful and I have great respect for this people who proudly brings on a traditional style of life regardless all the lures that tourism brings along

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Even if we cannot understand each other in words we did in other ways, we could communicate because they were putting an effort into it and I was impressed.

The village was clean, the people friendly everything made me thinking of a community that stands its ground and is not afraid of the challenge of the future. It is an impression just an impression because we did not scrape more then the surface of the surface of thir life but still, is a nice feeling

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