The lower Omo River valley in Ethiopia (East Africa) is home to up to 50 different tribes. Their lifestyle remains virtually unchanged. The region has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Of all the tribes, there are two most famous for their unusual appearance: the Mursi (the women of this tribe wear special plates in their lower lips) and the Bodi.
We will focus on the latter. If, in general, the men of all tribes of the Omo Valley are thin, wiry and muscular, then the men Bodi tribe on the contrary, complete.
Mursi woman.
Bodi tribe man.
Being full is beautiful.
Women of the Bodi tribe are famous for their graceful beauty: slender, with large and expressive eyes. Men, on the contrary, are very plump, with large bellies. The fatter a man is, the more attractive he is to women.
Ethiopian girls of the Bodi tribe.
Ethiopian woman of the Bodi tribe with a child.
Every year, with the onset of June, the tribe chooses the most prominent representative of the tribe, the most obese man. Representatives of the stronger sex who wish to occupy an honorable position in society must be unmarried. Preparation for the event lasts from 3 to 6 months.
During this time, men are on a high-calorie diet based on cow's blood and milk. This nutrition doubles, in some cases triples, body weight. Some participants resemble women in labor who are about to give birth.
When the time comes, a holiday is held in the village. Residents of the village are dancing and having fun. This is one of the peoples inhabiting Ethiopia.
And then it’s time to measure the girth of the bellies and weigh the participants in the competition. The winner is declared king of the day and receives the hand of the most beautiful girl in the tribe as a reward.
Ethiopian women of the Bodi tribe.
Symbol of prosperity.
Why is male fatness the reason for worship? Unlike most neighboring tribes, the Bodi are neither hunters nor warriors. They do not need a slender and athletic build to obtain food. They keep a lot of cows so they can feed a family. Thus, fat man among the tribe, the bodysuit is a symbol of well-being.
Obesity problems.
It is true that there are problems associated with speed dial weight. Blood cholesterol levels become extremely high and men often suffer from cardiovascular diseases. So many young people after the holiday trying to lose weight and get back into good physical shape. This is all thanks to the efforts of doctors who work in this region and are little by little trying to introduce healthy image life. Who knows, perhaps very soon this custom will disappear forever in Ethiopia.
The influence of civilization.
Until recently, grazing was the only means of subsistence. But due to tsetse flies infecting cows, Bodi makes timid attempts to exercise agriculture . Because of this, they lead an increasingly sedentary lifestyle. Does this mean that they will abandon nomadism? Wait and see. Meanwhile, the tribe continues its normal life: talking to the cows, singing songs to them and looking for new pastures.
Because Ethiopians do not belong to the Negroid race, but are representatives of the East African or Ethiopian small race, which has signs of the Negroid race (dark skin pigmentation, curly hair), but the facial features of Ethiopians are rather Caucasoid. The origin of the East African race remains controversial at present.
In addition to Ethiopia, the Ethiopian minor race is common in Eritrea, which separated from Ethiopia in 1993, as well as in Somalia, Djibouti and partly in Kenya, Tanzania, Sudan, and Egypt.
With a population of over 84 million, Ethiopia is the second most populous country in Africa (after Nigeria) and 14th in the world. Ethiopia is the only traditionally Christian African country; currently 63% of the Ethiopian population professes Christianity, 34% are Muslims, and 2.6% adhere to African animist cults.
Next - the most beautiful, in my opinion, Ethiopians (not in the racial, but in the national-state sense of the word, i.e. originally from Ethiopia). Ethiopian Jewish women are also included in the rating, because anthropologically they are no different from other Ethiopians.
23rd place: - Ethiopian model working in the USA and Europe. Height 179 cm, body measurements 84-61-89.
22nd place: Tirunesh Dibaba / Tirunesh Dibaba(born June 1, 1985) is an Ethiopian track and field athlete. Three-time Olympic champion and four-time world champion in the 5000 and 10,000 meters.
21st place. Belean Getachew- an aspiring model from the United States of Ethiopian origin.
20th place: Zewdy Awalom(born July 4, 1990, New York, USA) is an American singer of Ethiopian descent. The singer's channel - http://www.youtube.com/Zewdy
19th place. Hiwot Assefa Tesfaye- winner of the title Miss Intercontinental Africa 2009. Represented Ethiopia at Miss World 2010.
18th place. Feben Negash- Swedish model, winner of Sweden’s Next Top model 2014. Born in Ethiopia, she moved to Sweden with her mother at the age of 14.
17th place. Esti Elias / Esti Elias- Israeli model. Ethiopian Jew.
16th place. Mearg Tareke- American model. She was born in Ethiopia on April 29, 1991.
7th place: Liya Kebede / Liya Kebede(born January 3, 1978) is an Ethiopian model, fashion designer and actress. Lives and works in the USA. Height 178 cm, body measurements 82-59-86.
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6th place. Senait Gidey- Canadian model of Ethiopian origin.
5th place. Tahunia Rubel / Tahounia Rubel- Israeli model, winner of the Israeli version of the show "Big Brother". Ethiopian Jew. Born on February 20, 1988 in Ethiopia, at the age of 3 she and her family were taken to Israel as part of the military operation Solomon.
Fulfilling the “order” - about Ethiopians in Sudan. Because, being here, it is simply impossible to ignore the life of the huge Ethiopian community, most of which are women.
The girl Sarah came to Sudan from Ethiopia, like thousands of other girls like her, in search of a more prosperous and happy life. She found a job at one of the many cafes in Khartoum that serves Ethiopian coffee.
Orders at this cafe are traditional. Water, coffee. On the tray that Sarah places on the table, there is a ceramic coffee pot; thanks to its shape, it does not allow the aromatic coffee to cool for a long time, small cups, sugar, a cup of smoking bakhur (incense) and a plate of popcorn for a snack.
Even newly arrived Ethiopians very quickly begin to speak the Sudanese colloquial dialect of Arabic; at the very least, many of them also know English.
She asks how you liked the coffee, talks about herself, about her impressions of Sudan.
Few Ethiopians speak positively about Sudan, although most of them have lived here for years. The money they can earn in Sudan is considered an incredible amount in Ethiopia, so they use it to support not only themselves, but also their relatives back home.This is the case in Ethiopia - those who have a good education will never be left without a normal job and more or less decent earnings, but getting an education for many residents of this overpopulated African country is an unattainable dream.
Sarah doesn’t like it in Sudan either; work isn’t going well. The cafe is visited mainly by men who are interested not so much in tasting coffee, but in “close” communication with beautiful girls.
Sarah complains that she needs regular customers who will come to the cafe precisely to drink coffee from her hands, because her earnings are a percentage of each visitor’s order, and there is no way to get such customers.
Those men whom she treats to coffee gladly take her phone number, but they call her not at all in order to book a table again for another evening, but to invite her to meet somewhere outside the cafe. If she refuses to meet outside of work, then they stop calling and don’t come to the cafe anymore. Coffee is just that, just a reason for further acquaintance.
Sudanese men, brought up in a society with strict views, a girl who works in a cafe until late at night, sitting at tables with unknown men and having casual conversations with them, they perceive it unambiguously. Moreover, for some of them, Ethiopia is a country where they go for cheap pleasures that are not available in Sudan - wine and women.
Sudanese women, if they go to cafes, do so only as companions for their men. And Ethiopian girls are considered to be an easily accessible leisure option.
In many ways, they are perceived in the same way as women from the CIS in other countries.
They are beautiful, independent, hardworking. They do not count on anyone’s support and are forced to deal with all their problems alone, because, unlike Sudanese women, they often do not have male support behind them.
They take on any job that brings in at least some money - washing, ironing, cleaning, serving, babysitting, cooking, doing manicures, hairstyles. The list of jobs in which Ethiopian women can be involved is very extensive, because Sudanese women prefer to delegate these responsibilities to them.
Ethiopians with dark skin have European facial features. Many of them are tall, slender, and almost never suffer from excess weight.
Conducting for many years Far from their homeland, they are nevertheless very committed to their country and traditions. If they listen to music, then only Ethiopian singers.
They dance their national dances.
If they drink coffee, then only “jabana,” when Ethiopian coffee beans are roasted over charcoal and then manually crushed in a mortar.
If they eat bread, then only home-made sour flatbreads called injera.
Every Ethiopian girl has at least several national dresses in her closet - completely traditional, in the fashion of yesterday and from the latest collection of national fashion designers. Their designers, leaving the main motifs in the model - hand-embroidered crosses, nevertheless, constantly come up with new versions of dresses.
For any holidays, Ethiopian girls wear only national clothes.
Ethiopians live in their community.
Nobody oppresses them, despite the fact that most of them are Christians. In Khartoum, entire neighborhoods are inhabited by “habash,” as the Sudanese call them. There are their shops, cafes, hairdressers, where Ethiopian women deftly weave a variety of small braids from African hair. There is also an Ethiopian church in Khartoum, which occupies a fairly large area.
Probably, on the Internet you can find a lot of photographs of Ethiopian women in national clothes with hairstyles, but I don’t post other people’s photographs, I don’t post what I have, but my own.
Every country, every people has its own concepts of beauty. Ethiopia is no exception. You are provided with a photo selection of Ethiopian beauties.
You've probably noticed unusual round objects in their mouths. So this is a kind of “earring” (clay shard).
The unique facial "decoration" they use is completely unusual, even for wild people. The fact is that even at a young age, their girls’ lower lips are cut, and wooden blocks of larger and larger diameters begin to be inserted there.
Over several years, the hole in the lip gradually grows larger and larger. On the wedding day, a “plate” made of baked clay, called debi, is inserted into it, the purpose of which will be discussed later. The diameter of such a vessel in the lip can reach 30 centimeters, exceeding the diameter of the head itself! True, the tradition of wearing plates did not appear out of beauty, rather the opposite...
When the Ethiopians were captured and taken into slavery, they forcibly mutilated themselves so that they would not be taken. Now the size of the plate is a measure of beauty. The larger the plate, the more cattle they will give for the bride. Mursi girls always have a choice whether to make a hole in their lip or not. But for a girl without a stretched lip they give a very small ransom.
If such a plate is pulled out, the outer edge of the lip under the hole hangs down by 10–15 cm in the form of a kind of round rope. Many Mursi do not have front teeth, so that the plate does not knock on the front teeth, and the tip of a cracked, bleeding tongue constantly sticks out in this gap, like a rotten sting.
This is a tradition passed down from generation to generation
They begin to develop there, but the body, entering into a fight with the aliens, encloses the “strangers” with its connective tissue and they eventually die, leaving their own grave nodules under the skin, varying in size and shape. Knowing this, the Mursi specifically alternate the places of their introduction among themselves, depending on the final “pattern” on the skin that they want to obtain.
In the Surma tribe living in Ethiopia, scars on women's skin are considered a sign of beauty and sexuality. That is why 12-year-old girls of the tribe are decorated with cuts from head to toe at a special ceremony. A girl’s ability to endure terrible pain for the sake of future beauty is considered a sign of emotional maturity and readiness for motherhood.
“Blood is flowing, flies are landing on the wounds, the sun is burning,” this is how photographer Eric Lafforgue described the ritual scarring ceremony of a 12-year-old girl in the Ethiopian Surma tribe. According to Lafforgue, the girl showed unprecedented resilience and courage while her mother cut her skin for 10 minutes. “She didn’t make a sound or show anything that she was in pain. But when I later asked her if she was in pain, she admitted that she almost died from the pain!” - said the photographer.
No matter how much young girls are encouraged not to disfigure themselves, the men of the tribe still consider smooth skin to be “ugly.” In addition, a girl's willingness to endure pain is considered an indicator of her emotional maturity and readiness for motherhood. So the girls themselves strive to acquire scars and undergo the appropriate ceremony. “Scars in these tribes are a symbol of beauty, including among the Surmas. The girls endure the procedure silently, because if they show that they are in pain, it will undoubtedly bring shame to the family.”
Since scars are a sign of beauty, members of the tribe often pick at their wounds over and over again to make the cut marks more visible. For the same purposes, they rub coal dust and plant sap into the wounds. Sometimes an infection gets into the wound, and then the scar becomes even larger, which only pleases its owner.
For members of the Surma tribe, skin scars are a form of art, a way to express themselves. In a word, they play for them the same role that cosmetics play for their white-skinned peers.
Scars are not only a form of art, but also a method of social communication. Thus, additional scars may be applied to the body of each member of the tribe, symbolizing certain events or achievements. Each tribe has its own traditions of drawing patterns. Thus, in the body tribe, women use pieces of metal to apply circular designs around their shoulders.
Women of the Karrayu tribe scratch their faces in such a way that the remaining scars make them look like cats.
In the Ethiopian Karo tribe, both men and women inflict scars on themselves. Men mark the number of enemies they have killed with scars, and women simply strive to become beautiful and sexy in this way.
In the Menite tribe, women cut their skin with sharp stones to leave deeper scars. In the Dassanesh tribe, women make cuts only on their shoulders. In the Mursi tribe, men's scars are a sign of strength. In short, this tradition is widespread in different countries region.
In African tribes living in Ethiopia, scars are considered decoration for both men and women. They make men menacing, women beautiful and sexy.
In the Toposa tribe of Sudan, women mark their bellies with a geometric pattern of scars when they get married. Topos men put scars on their chests - they symbolize killed enemies. Men from the Sudanese Nuer tribe apply parallel lines of scars on their chests, and women from the Datoga tribe living in Tanzania apply scars around the eyes for beauty.
However, in lately More and more Africans are becoming convinced that this ancient tradition is hazardous to health. In many tribes, the procedure is carried out using common knives and blades, which, of course, are not sterile. This has already led to a number of hepatitis outbreaks. There are also cases of HIV transmission through scarring devices.
So far, the dangers of the procedure to health scare little the tribes living according to the covenants and traditions of their ancestors. But still, especially advanced young people try to abandon this practice, thereby incurring universal condemnation.
Recently, the African art of decorating the body with scars has become increasingly popular in the West. Many tattoo parlors, along with traditional ones, offer such services.
