The tribes of the Lower Omo Valley in Ethiopia live in close contact with nature and the river they depend on. But their ancestral ways of life are being threatened by the impacts of a mega-dam, climate change and a booming tourism industry.
A mother holds her son’s head, the boy is no older than two years old, inside a goat’s stomach. After a couple of minutes, he resurfaces as if out of water. He isn’t wet but his skin in covered in what the animal ate before dying – semi-digested grass – which his mother smears on his feet as if performing a cosmetic treatment. Then she gives him a piece of the stomach to chew on.
To undestand the lifestyles and worldviews of the tribes of the Lower Omo Valley in southwestern Ethiopia, first we must suspend all judgement. The ritual described may seem cruel but the child is peaceful and like the rest of the Hamer tribe his mother believes this act, which would be considered a form of violence elsewhere, can protect him from malaria. If anything, it serves to prepare him for a hard life of daily toil and suffering. What’s important isn’t to establish what’s right and what’s wrong, but gain a clearer picture to understand whether these peoples’ ways of life should be preserved. And, more importantly, who gets to decide.
We use water from the river. Before it was full but now there’s less, I don’t know why. Lorogue, Dassanech tribe elder
“Everything has changed in the past few years,” says tour guide John Lomala of the Dassanech, 48,000 people living along the Omo River and one of the area’s most populous tribes. The Lower Omo Valley is home to a total of 200,000 indigenous inhabitants divided into pastoralist tribes whose roots, languages, customs, cultures and physical appearance differ from one another, as do their agricultural systems. Eight groups were officially recognised in the government’s 2007 census, the last, but many anthropologists speak of greater numbers: from twelve to sixteen, to a couple dozen tribes. In Ethiopia, described as the “museum of peoples” by early 19th century Italian historian Carlo Conti Rossini, there are more than eighty ethnic groups.
90,000 people live along the banks of the Omo River and depend on its natural cycle of seasonal floods to fertilise the soil. The river, whose source lies at 2,400 metres in altitude, runs for 700 kilometres until il reaches the Turkana, the largest desert lake in the world, at 100 metres above sea level, marking the passage into Kenya. The river is a vital source of sustenance for the inhabitants of this area, which is unique for its high concentration of native populations who “still live fully in contact with nature, like humans did 3,000-4,000 years ago,” says Giovanni Miceli, a tour operator who has been travelling to Ethiopia for over a decade and who founded the NGO Barjo Imè to provide assistance to three villages of the Hamer tribe.
Yet seasonal floods have ceased due to a massive hydroelectric project – five dams in total, two of which are due to be completed – which has led to communities’ eviction from their land and increased their reliance on rain-fed (rather the flood-fed) agriculture. Food insecurity has resulted from the impacts of climate change, which has caused alterations in rain patterns, longer droughts and a higher frequency of unexpected, powerful floods. “The river used to be very full but for a few years now we haven’t been able to cultivate the banks,” explains Damo Dori of the Kara, one of the smallest tribes in Africa, with around 1,500 members. The origins of this sudden change are to be traced to the first dam built on the Omo, Gibe III, in 2016.
The dam, no question, is very important for the country: it produces electricity, therefore hard currency. But it needs to be managed properly to benefit the tribes as well. Yonas Mahetemu, founder of Bella