Women Beaten And Scarred, Babies Killed For Growing Teeth

Thick scars coloured dull red and black cover the backs of women belonging to Ethiopia's Hamar tribe, the legacy of an initiation rite that sees them beaten bloody.

No screaming is permitted by the men wielding the canes but the women don't care. Instead of fleeing, they beg the men to do it again and again until blood flows, dripping into the gritty red dust of the Omo River Valley.

These striking images reveal the beauty of Hamar women in their orange ochre make-up and bright beads, their skin scarred into intricate patterns using thorns, resilient as they live a life that's precarious at best and brutal at worst.

But not everything about the Hamar is troubling. For the Hamar, cattle are everything, and for the men, they form a key part of the rite that turns them from boy to man. At cattle jumping ceremonies, young men are required to leap across 15 cows, smeared with dung to make them slippery. If he fails, he cannot marry and will be beaten by the watching women. At the same ceremony, his female relatives are beaten to create a blood debt between the man and his sisters who show off their scars with pride.

Totally committed to their initiated sons, the mothers are whipped to blood, in order to prove their courage and accompany their sons during the test.

But for Hamar women, beatings are not just part of an initiation ritual - they are daily life until at least two children have been born.

Under Hamar rules, a man need not explain why he's delivering a beating. It is his prerogative to mete out as he sees fit. Men can also have more than one wife, with junior wives left to do the lion's share of the planting and water gathering.

A photograpg who made a series of photographs depicting the culture, tells the story of meeting a Hamar boy who had walked for several days to a local town, just to see his favourite Premier League football team on television.

"This guy was wearing a Chelsea T-shirt, but still had to jump over ten bulls to be able to marry a girl in his tribe: a real culture shock. They are all really into Chelsea, Arsenal, like many other Ethiopians, who are just crazy about English football," he says.

The majority of the 20,000 strong Hamar people live in the Omo River Valley, a fertile part of the vast Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples' Region of south-west Ethiopia, which is bordered by Kenya and South Sudan.

Most still live in traditional villages, although growing numbers are migrating to the region's cities and towns as well as the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.

Cattle form the axis around which the Hamar's world revolves, evidenced by the fact that there are 27 different words to describe the colour of a cow in the local language.

Men spend the majority of the time caring for the animals, which are also used to pay bride prices when the man takes a wife - always a woman from the Hamar tribe - and generally amounts to 30 goats and 20 cows.

Cows also form part of the male initiation rite, which involves contenders attempting to leap over a row of 15 cows made extra slippery with dung.

At the same ceremony, the man's sisters and other female relatives are beaten bloody to create a blood debt so the man remembers to help them should they face tough times in the future.

While cattle-leaping is relatively harmless, another practice, known as 'mingi' is more troubling. The Hamar tribe still practises ritual infanticide. If the first tooth appears in the upper jaw, instead of the lower, the child becomes what they called 'mingi' - this applies also to the baby teeth and the adult teeth when the kids are seven or eight.

If a 'mingi' child is kept in the village by the mother, elders believe droughts, famines and diseases will come in the community, so they kill the babies. Most 'mingi' children are left in the desert alone to die, although local charities now regularly check the area for abandoned children which are then raised in orphanages away from the tribe.