Category: History and Geography

A Mursi Woman with Lip plate and cattle headdress. Photo source: Imgur

This photo is of a Mursi woman from the Omo Valley in southwest Ethiopia. Her lip is stretched in the traditional Mursi fashion, with a clay lip plate decorated with red and white paint. Her face is painted. She wears a cattle headdress and holds animal horns on her head, cushioned with a piece of fabric.

 Below is a Suri boy, who has painted his face with white clay. The Suri also live in the Omo Valley and share similar language and customs with the Mursi.

Suri Boy with Face Paint. Photo Source: Rod Waddington

 We see these images in travel magazines and coffee-table books. They exist in multitudes on image-based sites like Pinterest and Imgur. In fact, I was unable to find the original source of the first photo; the earliest post of it was on a site selling photographs on posters and other decorations.

 A quick internet search of “Mursi tribe,” “Suri tribe” or “Omo Valley” will result in hundreds of images of ornately decorated bodies, especially those of young women and children. Their faces and bodies are decorated with white, red, and yellow paint in swirls and dots. They wear plants, horns, metals, baskets and all types of items on their heads. The women often have stretched lips and earlobes. Adult men and women often have scarification patterns on their torsos.

 The success of the newest Marvel film, Black Panther, has increased the western world’s interest in the traditional clothing and body art of African tribes. The creators of the movie drew inspiration from images of people from various ethnic groups in Africa, including several tribes in Omo Valley, to create the Afro-futuristic aesthetic of Wakanda. The result was a visually stunning display of African beauty.

 In an interview, costume designer Ruth Carter described the Suri people, where she found inspiration for the River Tribe in the film: “If you’ve ever seen those books of those pretty kids with [their faces] all painted, and they have flowers in their hair, and sticks and stuff, that’s the Suri tribe” [1]. It is very likely that she is referring to the photography done by Hans Silvester, whose book, Natural Fashion: Tribal Decoration from Africa displays colorful images of the Suri, and other ethnic groups [2]. His subjects are often children, barely clothed but covered from head to toe in body paint, their heads festooned with greenery. Here you can see examples of his photography of the Omo Valley people.

 But what if I were to tell you that these photographs do not depict the Suri and Mursi as they truly are? These people do not normally cover themselves with plants and headdresses. While they do use clays, ash, and earth on their skin, they rarely do so in the colorful and elaborate manner that western photography shows. These photographs do not reflect an “authentic” reality. Instead, they reveal a relatively new practice of “dressing up for the white men with cameras”, born from the influx of tourists who came to photograph them, starting in the 1990s.

 While lip-plates and body painting are indeed part of their practices, the most spectacular styles are part of a complex system of disguise, deception, and resistance in the face of outside pressures [6]. To put it simply, as one Suri woman does, “We do it for tourists because they ask us to” [3]. On the surface, the main reason behind “dressing up” is because Western tourists travel to these relatively remote areas, specifically to take photographs of “some of the last primitive tribes,” in “a land forgotten by time,” or other such nonsense [4]. The tourists pay for the privilege of visiting a village and photographing the people there. Because the tourists seek images of the primitive, bizarre, and spectacular, the locals respond by making their appearance increasingly elaborate. Anthropologist Jon Abbink notes, “Most of the photos are poses that create a new, mystifying reality. They are not meant to be enlightening or explain. They reflect the preoccupations of the makers and have little to do with Suri life” [8]. The same can easily be said of the photographs of the Mursi.

 This article will describe and explain the interactions between the Mursi and Suri people and Western tourists, pry apart the primitivist myth, and explore the background of these local groups to reveal how this relationship has evolved.

Interaction as Transaction

The tourists are drawn by the aesthetics of exoticism, and the idea of playing the part of an adventurer, “discovering” these tribes. Documentaries, reality TV shows, travel magazines, and coffee-table books have all added to the “primitivist myth” that surrounds groups such as those in Omo Valley. The Ethiopian government, in its efforts to attract tourism, further fuels such imagery. It is this fascination with the “exotic Other” that drives thousands of tourists a year to travel to Southwestern Ethiopia, not for the geography (there are no beaches, and the area is rather unforgiving) but for the people themselves [5].

 But, as many anthropologists have described, the interactions between the locals and tourists are devoid of any social meaning [3],[5]. It is purely transactional. There is no real effort or intention on the part of the tourists to get to know the locals or their culture. They are there to take photographs. The locals and tourists negotiate prices for the photos with a combination of hand gestures, body language, and yelling, sometimes (but not always) with the help of a tour guide as a mediator.

 The interaction often leaves both tourists and locals disappointed. The tourists feel that the locals are greedy, aggressively demanding money and unexpectedly raising their prices. They expected a more ‘authentic’ experience, but were instead swarmed and harassed. The locals, on the other hand, feel that the tourists underpay them, and do not understand why these tourists are so interested in traveling far distances just to look at them and take their photograph. Many are indignant at being looked at like animals in a zoo or objects in a museum [4]. They feel that the tourists act like rude children, and try to cheat them out of their money. They say that they must be aggressive, or else the tourists will try to get out of paying what they are due [5].

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Suri women wearing face paint and various objects on their heads pose for a photo. Source: The Guardian

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The Paradox of Imperialist Voyeurism

 Many scholars note that tourism comes from a place of privilege. The act of traveling to other countries for leisure can only be done by those who have the money and power to do so. As Jon Abbink says, “Tourism is the expression of a particular kind of consumer identity with a globalizing impact. It emanates from societies that are relatively powerful and wealthy” [5]. Additionally, this type of tourism depends on the continuation of a power binary: wealthy and poor, developed and undeveloped, educated and uneducated, civilized and barbaric. It is the exoticism and Otherness that draws these tourists. They would not be as interested in taking photographs of their next-door neighbors.

 There exist several paradoxes within this realm of tourism. The western audience is drawn to such imagery of primitivism both because they experience disgust at the locals’ bizarre and backwards way of life, and because they romanticize an idea of innocence, purity, and closeness with nature which they themselves have lost as members of an industrialized society. The latter end of this paradox is the “primitivist myth,” and the concept of the “noble savage” [5], [8], [9]. Here, the imagery focuses on beautiful, happy people living simply, and close to nature, untouched by the effects of modern technology. The primitivist myth fuels admiration for such people, as if they represent a sense of morality which the developed world had somehow lost.

 Scholars also note that there is a sense of nostalgia for an “early form of humanity” which colonization and industrialism has destroyed [4]. People of the developed world are drawn to notions of the primitive because it represents something that has been destroyed at the hands of the western world. They travel to search for the “authentic,” which they feel their own lives are lacking. This nostalgia is something like guilt or pity. Here, the primitives are victims of imperialism and globalization. The “white savior” complex comes into play here, as visitors can both feel guilt and a feeling that they have somehow helped by having visited. In the documentary, Framing the Other, a female tourist visits a Mursi village to take photos. On the drive back, she alternates between expressing excitement and happiness with her experience, and then suddenly crying because “we made them this way.” She insists that bringing tourists to these villages is hurting them, and that the practice should be banned [10].

 Finally, tourists idealize the trip as an adventure, and see themselves as explorers entering a space “where hardly any whites had set foot,” a remote wilderness where they can find a “real, primitive, untouched tribe” existing in “pristine conditions of nature” [5]. The inaccessibility of the terrain and a hint of possible danger adds to the mystique. The tour company websites and other promotional material do well to highlight this sense of adventure. Confusingly, the people are described as peaceful and happy, as well as barbaric and violent. The Suri and Mursi men are often called “warriors.” Descriptions of their ritual scarification and ceremonial stick-fighting contribute to this image. Additionally, the Mursi and Suri people’s aggressive tactics toward tourists have led tour guides to see them as savages and thieves. They warn their clients to leave their valuables behind in the car before approaching the village.

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Suri boys photographed by Hans Silvester, from Jon Abbink’s "Suri Images: The Return of Exoticism and the Commodification of an Ethiopian “Tribe”[8]. The flowers, foliage, and bright face paints are not characteristic of traditional Suri ornamentation, but are used to create a sense of innocence and connection to nature.

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 The villages most frequented by tour companies are those which the locals have intentionally set up as meeting places for tourists. As semi-nomadic agro-pastoralists, they are constantly moving. “Tourist villages” like Solbu, where Tamás Régi conducted much of his study on the Mursi, were understood by the locals and the tour guides to be a place where tourists go to take pictures, and where Mursi people went to make money [4], [6], [7]. People rarely use this village as a permanent residence, but rather see it as a stopping point or a place to make extra money.

 Thus, the very advertisements of these places as “pristine, untouched lands,” and their inhabitants as members of “the last primitive tribes” cause such a narrative to fall further and further from reality. The photographs that come out of these visits perpetuate a story which does not exist, yet drives more and more people to travel to see it for themselves. The tourist villages functions as a “cultural stage” on which the locals perform their culture. This serves to both control the tourists’ movement and consumption within their space, and to protect their actual, authentic lives from voyeurism [7].

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The Real Omo Valley People

Before I go any further, it is essential to bring to light the truth of the inhabitants of Omo Valley. Understanding who they really are will better illustrate the absurdity of their situation, and of the manners in which they are depicted.

 The Suri and Mursi are only two ethnic groups out of roughly a dozen which inhabit the area around the Omo and Mago rivers, in the far Southwestern corner of Ethiopia. The tribes each have distinct languages and cultures, all of which are considered outside of the majority ethnic group in Ethiopia, which occupies the political power and the “developed” areas of the country. Those in the Omo Valley see the rest of the Ethiopians as “highlanders,” who have exerted pressure on them to abandon their pastoralist way of life and their “backwards” customs such as lip-stretching and scarification. As the government has sectioned off much of their surrounding land as national parks or game preserves, the people of the Omo Valley are being squeezed into smaller and smaller areas. Because their way of life centers around cattle and subsistence farming, moving from place to place to find fertile land, they are left with fewer viable areas for grazing and agriculture. Droughts and famine in recent decades have added to the strain [11-13].

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Map of Omo Valley region and tribes. Source: "Famine, Gold and Guns: The Suri of Southwestern Ethiopia, 1985–91” [12].

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 As mentioned above, the Suri and Mursi are only two of several unique ethnic groups. I have chosen to write about both of them together because they share similar languages and traditions (such as lip-plates, body painting, scarification, and stick-fighting), and have similar relationships with tourists. The Suri and Mursi have historically gotten along because of their similarities. They each have enemy groups with which they fight for land and cattle. Tensions between The Suri and the Nyangatom, and the Mursi and the Aari, rise and fall, with brief periods of peace in between. The Sudanese war across the border introduced AK 47s to the Omo Valley people, which they use to protect their homes and cattle, and which are now a status symbol for the men [12]. The introduction of firearms made rivalry more deadly than before, but it would be incorrect to see these people as “violent savages.”

Adornment with Clay and Earth

One anthropologist has extensively studied the Mursi’s cultural relationship with earth and clay, and believes that both body-painting and wearing clay lip-plates is connected to the group’s belief in healing and protecting powers of earth [15]. She explains that clay, earth, ash, and dung are used in everyday life as medicine and protection against disease or misfortune. The Mursi’s concept of medicine involves applying substances to the skin, rather than ingesting medicines. They say, “when one anoints with clay, disease will end, for disease is afraid of clay” [15].

 Different earthy materials serve different purposes. Young boys are taught to cover themselves with mud to protect themselves from the sun. Young men use mud on their bodies before stick fights to protect their skin from injury [16]. Fayers-Kerr repeatedly describes the act of using clays and other materials as anointing, and stresses that it is the act itself, rather than the appearance of the clay on skin, that is important. Thus, the aesthetic property of body-painting in traditional Mursi customs is secondary to the healing and protective acts. This is vastly different from the type of body painting used for tourists, which are intentionally elaborate and colorful.

 Because of their cultural similarities, it may be assumed that the Suri people’s use of earthy materials comes from a similar train of thought. Jon Abbink, in his studies of Suri people, does note that the Suri’s stick-fighting happens on a much larger scale, and is a much more spectacular event than the Mursi’s. During stick fighting, the Suri men, as well as the audience, show up in body paint and their best outfits [17]. So, the use of body paints as adornment does occur, but is limited to special occasions, rather than everyday life.

Fayers-Kerr extends her hypothesis on the Mursi’s relationship with clay to include the clay lip-plates that the women wear. She believes that earth represents fertility, and to wear earth in one’s mouth is to display one’s fertility where it is most visible [15].

 While the lip plate is a main attraction to western tourists because they see the practice as bizarre, ugly, or disfiguring, Suri and Mursi people regard the lip plate as the ultimate sign of beauty and femininity. Girls begin stretching their lip at puberty, by first piercing their lip and inserting a small piece of wood. They gradually stretch their lip by inserting a larger and larger piece into the hole, until they are able to fit a clay plate [14]. A girl is not married until her lip is fully stretched and healed. The process takes patience, pain tolerance, and great care to ensure the lip does not break or get infected.

 Once healed, women wear their plates during important events, such as when serving her husband or guests, to dances and ceremonial stick fights, and now, when tourists come. The clay plates are heavy, so they are not worn all of the time. As a woman grows older, she may stop wearing plates, and let her lip shrink. Thus, the women most commonly seen to wear lip plates are unmarried teenage girls, and younger wives [9].

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Mursi used to stretch both their upper and lower lips. This is not seen as often today. Photographed by R. Pauleau, 1952.

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 Two common myths around the lip plate are as follows. First, that the practice originated to deter slave traders from taking the women, as they saw the practice as ugly and disfiguring; second, that the size of the plate is equal to the girl’s bridewealth in cattle which a groom must pay to marry her. There is no evidence to support the first claim, and the second claim is only partially true. A stretched lip is an object of beauty to the Suri and Mursi, and may make a woman more desirable. Shauna LaTosky explains, “A fully stretched lip means that a girl is competent, sexually mature, and can walk proudly when she enters her husband’s cattle compound or serves his guests food. She will be admired by all for everything that it symbolizes: a sense of beauty, a good disposition, fertility, commitment, and virtuous behavior” [9]. However, Mursi marriages are sometimes arranged and paid for before a girl has pierced her lip [14]. In other cases, being a mature (lip-plated) Mursi girl means that a girl has the “power to grant or deny suitors’ requests” [9].

 When asked why the women stretch their lips, the locals often respond simply that it is their custom, it is their tradition, and that it is a good thing. Both men and women admire the lip plate. It is a symbol of their culture and their identity. It is a way to be recognized as a Suri or Mursi person. A Mursi woman who does not stretch her lip might be called derogatorily, ngidi, which is the name of Kwegu, a neighboring group. ​​ In Shooting with Mursi, a film by a Mursi man named Olisarali Olibui, a woman who only had a small hole in her lip explained that she started stretching her lip, got an infection, and had to stop. “Now I look like a foreigner,” she said [16]. The lip plate serves to identify a ​​ woman as a member of her ethnic group, and thus, both the women and men take great pride in it [14], [16]. ​​ 

 Now, the women face pressure to abandon their custom of wearing lip plates. The government wants the Omo valley people to modernize, and to stop their “backwards, barbaric” ways, which include wearing lip-plates [14]. Some nonprofit groups view the practice as oppressive and controlling to women. An increase in girls going to school has led to more girls choosing not to pierce their lip. Even some elders have expressed that the practice has lost its meaning, now that women only wear it on certain occasions, and let their lip hang empty most of the time [9]. It is important to note that most women see the lip-plate as their choice, and something they take great pride in. They see this pressure to stop as an attack on their freedom and identity.

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Note that earlier photography of the Mursi is devoid of extra body painting and ornamentation. The presence of tourists influenced the way the Mursi alter their appearance for the Western gaze.

Source: Chez les Negresses a Plateaux, Edition R. Begue, 9. rue Chauchois - Paris

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 Both the Mursi and Suri are described to be very proud peoples, who maintain disdain and suspicion for outsiders, which include other tribes, the ‘highlanders,’ and tourists. Historically, they have accepted little aid from nonprofit or government groups, and their remote location had left them relatively unbothered by outsiders until recent decades. Now, the construction of the Pride of Ethiopia dam, other government projects, the pressure to establish permanent establishments and conform to modern times, and the influx of tourists have now taken a toll on the locals’ sense of power and identity [3], [11]. Anthropologist David Turton notes that the Mursi that he knew thirty years ago saw themselves as the moral and political centers of their world, but since then, “they are revealed to themselves as a small, localized, poor technologically backward and relatively powerless group, living on the margins of the Ethiopian state” [14].

 It is their pride in their identities, their disdain for outsiders, and their bitterness at the way they have been marginalized that fuels their reactions to tourists. This is a case in which exposure to “modernity” does not weaken the identity of a group. In fact, they have hardened against outside attempts to change them. By dressing up and using a variety of tactics to ensure payment from tourists, they manipulate their situation to work for their benefit. They use their earnings to buy more cattle and guns, to strengthen their communities against rival groups, and to maintain their way of life. For women, earning money from tourists can be a way of reclaiming bodily autonomy as well as financial freedom. The following section will explore the ways in which the locals use their bodies to shift the balance of power.

Bodies as Commodities, Bodies as Resistance

Tourists normally pay a minimum 2 Ethiopian Birr (currently about $0.72 USD) per person, per photo. The average tourist spends 20 to 30 minutes at a village, and takes about 20 photos on average [16]. In some villages, like Solbu and Hinay (these are both Mursi), men stand at the entrance to the village and take 200 Birr per vehicle that enters. Prices for photos are negotiated based on the number of people in the photo, whether the photo includes children or animals, and even what type of camera the tourist is using. People with larger cameras will be charged more, and there is yet another price for recording video [7].

 The locals are very savvy to what cameras are, and what the tourists are doing. Some have become very adept at counting shutter releases to make sure they are receiving their due pay [7]. While they profit financially from this interaction, many are still indignant at being treated as if they are a zoo. What they don’t understand, according to the anthropologists who have worked with them, is why in the world the tourists want to come and take photos of them in the first place. The western concept of tourism and leisure does not exist in their societies. People don’t travel far distances just to look at other people like that. It doesn’t make sense to them [6].

Many of the anthropologists writing on the interaction between tourists and Omo Valley people cited Susan Sontag’s discussion of photography as a predatory act [3], [5], [14], [18]. The following is a quote from Sontag, in David Turton’s paper. Sontag says, “[T]here is something predatory in the act of taking a picture. To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them that the can never have; it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed. (1979:14, emphasis added)” [14]. The Suri and Mursi are intensely aware of the voyeuristic and predatory nature of the western tourists’ photography. In fact, in the Mursi language, the word êjo is used both for the act of taking a picture, and shooting a gun. Both are also accompanied by the same gesture, pulling back the index finger with one eye closed. The tactics which the Mursi use serve to protect themselves, and shift the balance of power.

 One might compare what the Suri and Mursi do, to tactics used regularly in sex work. They don an identity through their manipulation of appearance, and this identity is something which is false, but more attractive to the customer. It is a way to both increase income, and to hide one’s true self through “misrepresentation and disguise” [18]. The camera is the tourists’ mask, leaving the subject exposed. The subject, therefore, creates a mask as well. Women and children work together to paint and dress each other, and this preparation for performance becomes a means of communal bonding, which strengthens the actors’ solidarity with each other [7]. ​​ They keep in their huts the materials and items which they use to prepare themselves for tourists. They may put on their head a cattle headdress, which is an item a teen boy makes to put on his favorite animal. They might also wear any number of items that would normally never be worn in the way they are in front of tourists, such as babies’ skirts or baskets on their heads, or metal bracelets in their lip instead of a lip plate.

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Nandonge, a Mursi woman, paints herself in preparation for tourists. Still from Framing The Other trailer. Source: Youtube.

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 Women may mimic chores to perform culture: “grinding sorghum, cleaning grain, scratching animal skin, making lip-plates, and roasting maize are the major activities. After the tourists leave, the Mursi women usually stop these activities, sometimes as soon as the tourists have left their house, even if they are still in the area” [6]. Young girls who have yet to begin stretching their lip may hold a lip plate from their bottom teeth with a piece of string to fool tourists [7].

 When asked about it, the locals will openly admit that they know what they do is fake, and that they don’t care. A Mursi woman in Framing the Other said, “If we don’t wear all this stuff, the tourists will not take our photo...I don’t care if it’s fake on my face. I don’t care if I wear something fake.” She then laughs [10]. The locals are aware that tourists sometimes see through the act. However, they make little pretense at claiming to be authentic. They never cease to remind the tourists that their relationship is purely transactional [14].

 The majority of those who earn money by posing for photographs are younger women, followed by children, and older wives and widows. Men are sometimes the subject of interest for their scarification and “warrior” aesthetic, but they are more often in the pastures with their cattle. Tourists desire photographs of women with large lip-plates, and smiling, painted children. Thus, unmarried girls and young wives make the most money. Their lips are stretched but not yet shrunken, so they can wear the largest plates. Unmarried girls have less responsibility to tie them down, and are able to freely walk the distance from their homes to the tourist villages [7].

 While they do compete with each other to get the most photographs, staying together also ensures success. Girls cling to each other’s arms and refuse to be pried apart, therefore forcing a tourist to take a photo of both, and pay both. Having others around also ensures witnesses who can attest to how many photos a tourist has taken, so that no one is cheated out of payment.

 For women, the act of making money from tourists creates empowerment. The Mursi do not share their earnings with each other, so what a woman makes is hers to keep. While outside groups pressure the women to abandon their lip-plates, the women resist by profiting off of her proudly stretched lip. They know that while the government condemns them for their “backwards” customs, it is those very same customs which they use to grow the flow of tourists into Ethiopia [9].

 While the system of globalization and exoticism have led to the flow of western tourists into Omo Valley, the people there have found a way empower themselves, strengthen their identities, and resist efforts to change or demean them.

Final Notes: In Search of Authenticity

When tourists are about to arrive, The Suri and Mursi hide their plastic bottles, take off their tee-shirts, and help each other paint their bodies and faces. They get out the items which they will wear for photographs. In Framing the Other, a Dutch tourist hops out of a truck and walks toward a Mursi village, cooing and saying “hellooo!” in a way that would make one think that she was visiting a preschool [10]. The tourists, with some help from tour guides, choose the people they want to photograph, and they separate off in groups to complete the transaction. The entire ordeal is extremely uncomfortable to watch.

 Tensions rise as the tourists and locals shout numbers at each other, hold up fingers, and shake their heads. The Dutch woman has brought along latex balloons in her fanny pack, and uses those to pay the children rather than money. She holds them out, but pulls away repeatedly, insisting the children each say, “Thank you” before she lets them take one. She buys two lip plates from a Mursi woman named Nandonge, arguing the price down to 7 Birr. Later, on the drive back, she beams and states that it was the best experience she had on this trip, and that the balloons were a great success (she praises herself for being so clever as to avoid having to pay each child 1 Birr per photo, which currently is about $0.36 USD). Later, she falls into guilt-fueled tears at the poor condition of the locals’ lives, believing it is the tourists’ fault, and saying that tourists should be banned. Afterward, she says that the next time she visits, she doesn’t want to take pictures, but have a more “authentic” experience, and just “make contact with the people” [10]. Back at the village, the Mursi woman expresses disappointment, as she first thought the Dutch tourist was going to be kind, but then bought her lip plates for much too low a price, and then didn’t say goodbye before she left.

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Nandonge and the Dutch tourist. Still from Framing the Other. Source: Archaeology Channel

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 Some anthropologists working with Suri and Mursi groups have noted seeing tourists walking around behind villages, as if searching for a “real” village behind the tourist one. Some tourists stop their cars several miles from the village to approach on foot, feeling that it made the experience more “authentic” [5]. The locals, on the other hand, can’t understand why these people would want to walk during the hottest part of the day, and not use their cars if they have them. Many tourists expressed disappointment at such short and frantic visits, feeling that the locals were too greedy, and that the experience was too commercial.

 Both Suri and Mursi have also expressed their frustration with tourists not wanting to get to know them as real people. They feel that the visits are too short for any meaningful interaction, and that the tourists just want to take their photograph and leave. They express interest in the idea of having visitors stay for a couple of days, but they lack the resources and infrastructure to make such extended stays possible.

 Clearly, there is a misunderstanding from both sides. The Omo Valley people are proud of their identities and cultures, and would prefer to educate tourists, but believe that all tourists want are spectacular images. They respond by dressing up, and interacting with the tourists with suspicion and disdain. The tourists feel that the locals are greedy, aggressive, and unwelcoming. The tour companies further fuel the myth that the Suri and Mursi are violent thieves, citing this as a reason for the quick, impersonal visits.

 The key to future change lies in empowering a voice in the Omo Valley people. In 2009, Olisarali Olibui, a Mursi man, created the film, Shooting with Mursi, with the help of filmmaker Ben Young. Olisarali had been taught English by an Australian missionary group, and developed an interest in cameras. He taught his brother, Milishia, how to speak English and how to use a camera. In the film, Olisarali says, “I found a new weapon and I want to give my people a voice… The camera can shoot something, and the camera’s bullet goes all over the world” [16]. The film documents Mursi life from a Mursi point of view.

Olisarali Olibui shows his footage to members of his community. Source: Green Planet Films

 Cameras have done so much to sensationalize the Mursi, to the point that it becomes difficult to determine any hints of reality. Even accounts from anthropologists who spend several years among the groups they study are still, in the end, presented through the filter of the western mind. Olisarali takes the camera and turns it into a tool that works for his people. In the film, he talks to a group of Mursi, telling them that they should not accept so little for photographs: “Our bodies are special, aren’t they?” [16]. His brother Milishia has also created and distributed pamphlets to tourists to educate them about Mursi culture, explaining that their customs are more complex than their short visits allow them to understand [4].

 The early encounters between western tourists and the Suri and Mursi of the Omo Valley were fraught with suspicion and disdain. Over the years, these people adapted to the increasing flow of tourists by making their appearances ever more spectacular, and developing tactics to ensure better payment. However, tensions still remain, as the visits are hurried, and devoid of any meaningful interaction, which both sides desired. It is unclear as to whether longer visits would be possible, as they would require the development of sites for housing and hosting tourists--in a place that is remote, among people who are constantly on the move.

 Dissimulation and disguise have worked as tools of resistance and empowerment in the face of globalization for these marginalized groups. Despite their increased interactions with the western world, as well as pressure from various sources to “develop” and “modernize,” the Mursi and Suri do not look to be on the verge of disappearing (as some sensationalist articles and documentaries might have one believe). They continue to maintain pride in their culture. The next step may lie in the very object that objectified them. By taking the camera into their own hands, and by educating the western world, they are able to take off their own masks, on their own terms, and give voice to their realities.

References

[1] racked36. “Black Panther's Symbolic African Costumes | Racked.” YouTube, YouTube, 9 Feb. 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=sL23-DBtqHg.

[2] Silvester, Hans. Natural fashion: tribal decoration from Africa. Hubsta Ltd, 2009.

[3] Temperley, Matilda. "Picture Story: How Photographing the Omo Valley People Changed Their Lives." The Observer. May 24, 2015. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/may/24/photographing-the-omo-valley-people.

[4] Régi, Tamás. "The concept of the primitive in texts and images: from colonial travelogues to tourist blogs in Southwestern Ethiopia." (2013): 40-67

[5] Abbink, Jon. "Tourism and its discontents. Suri-tourist encounters in southern Ethiopia." Social Anthropology 8, no. 1 (2000): 1-17.

[6] Régi, Tamás. "Tourism, leisure and work in an east African pastoral society (Respond to this article at http://www. therai. org. uk/at/debate)." Anthropology Today 28, no. 5 (2012): 3-7.

[7] Régi, Tamás. "The art of the weak: Tourist encounters in East Africa." Tourist Studies 13, no. 1 (2013): 99-118.

[8] Abbink, Jon. "Suri Images: The Return of Exoticism and the Commodification of an Ethiopian “Tribe”." Cahiers d'études africaines 4 (2009): 893-924.

[9] LaTosky, Shauna. "Images of Mursi women and the realities they reveal and conceal." elf an (2014): 121.

[10] Framing the Other. Directed by Ilja Kok and Willem Timmers. Copper Views Film Productions, 2011. https://www.kanopy.com/product/framing-other.

[11] Abbink, Jon. "Disaster, relief and political change in southern Ethiopia: developments from within Suri society." In Disaster and Development in the Horn of Africa, pp. 151-170. Palgrave Macmillan, London, 1995.

[12] Abbink, Jon. "Famine, Gold and Guns: The Suri of Southwestern Ethiopia, 1985–91." Disasters 17, no. 3 (1993): 218-225.

[13] Abbink, Jon. "The deconstruction of 'tribe': ethnicity and politics in southwestern Ethiopia." Journal of Ethiopian Studies 24 (1991): 1-21.

[14] Turton, David. "Lip‐plates and ‘the people who take photographs’: Uneasy encounters between Mursi and tourists in southern Ethiopia." Anthropology Today 20, no. 3 (2004): 3-8.

[15] Fayers-Kerr, Kate Nialla. "THE 'MIRANDA' AND THE 'CULTURAL ARCHIVE': From Mun (Mursi) lip-plates, to body painting and back again." Paideuma (2012): 245-259.

[16] Shooting with Mursi. Directed by Olisarali Olibui and Ben Young. UK/Ethiopia, 2009. Kanopy.

[17] Abbink, Jon G. "Violence, ritual, and reproduction: Culture and context in Surma dueling." Ethnology (1999): 227-242.

[18] Eczet, Jean-Baptiste. "Reveal and Remove. Uses of the body and its Ornaments in Mursiland." In Annales d'Ethiopie, vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 279-283. Persée-Portail des revues scientifiques en SHS, 2014.