Could you imagine a life without Wi-Fi, smartphones, washing machines, sewage systems, medicine and all the other benefits of science and tech progress? Even if it’s difficult to picture somebody living like this today, some isolated tribes who have not been touched by the “modern era” still exist. This is the case of Surma people, a collective name used to identify the Mursi, Mekan and Suri tribes. These people live in Southwestern Ethiopia, near the Sudan border, a place also called “the African Tibet” because of the distance from any sign of modernism.
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| Surma or Mursi People |
Until recently Surma men used to fight each other with wooden sticks, but that changed when Kalashnikovs reached them too. What remained is a ritual, “the Donga fight”, in which they display their skills using those rudimentary weapons. So their first impact with modernity is represented by firearms and war. This reminds me of the Colonization Era, when the conquistadors used to promote wars between tribes, giving them weapons and taking advantage of the natural resources those territories had to offer. The “civilized” people also brought them alcohol, which combined with Kalashnikovs lead to many unwanted incidents.
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| Donga stick fighting in Surma Suri – Ethiopia |
These people are semi-nomadic; their lives mostly depend on cattle breeding, the animals representing their currency and also the way they pay for the women they want to marry.Surma men guard the animals and always carry some kind of chairs with them, decorated accordingly to their tribe.
Warriors paint their bodies in red and go through initiation rituals involving isolating and feeding themselves with milk and beef blood. The children of the Chief paint their faces in white when their village receives visitors, in order to stand out from the crowd.
Surma women are famous for wearing wooden lip-plates, an accessory that seems mutilating to us, but they designate as prestigious: the bigger the plate, the higher the rank and the price of a woman. Some girls are starting to oppose this tradition lately.
Surma people have a tendency of creating extravagant accessories in order to be photographed by tourists and earn some money this way. They surely have a controversial culture, but they make us change our perspective on the beauty of nature and the value of a simple lifestyle.
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