“Your George W. Bush came here two yearsago and not a person recognized him.”

“No one?”“No one knew who he was.”“Would they have known Nelson Man-

dela?”“No. No one here would have seen TV. No

one here thinks beyond Omo.”I was speaking with Lale Biwa, a member

of the Karo people, in Ethiopia’s Omo Valley.We were surrounded by low, circular hutsmade from sticks, with pitched grass roofs,in his home village of Dus, on the banks of

the Omo River. A woman, heavily adornedin beads and bracelets, ground sorghum ona large stone in the nearby shade. Men,some carrying AK-47s, sat in clusters. Smallnaked children scampered past. Goats andcattle roamed freely on the dusty floodplain. There was no electricity, no runningwater, no cars. Mr. Biwam, who guesses hisage to be “about 40,” looked around. “It is agood place,” he said. “The people are true.”

I had come to the Omo Valley with the in-novative tourism entrepreneur Will Jonesto get a view into the lives of some of Africa’smost traditional tribes. “I’m particularly in-terested in the Omo,” Mr. Jones told me.

“It’s an at-risk ecosystem, with at-risk com-munities. But it is still a very wild place.” Mr.Jones was born in Nigeria of English par-ents, raised in East Africa and educated inEngland. “When it came time to put on asuit and go into town,” he said, “I came backto Africa.”

Mr. Jones, 45, has been creating custom-ized tours to the continent for more than 20years. Wild Philanthropy is his latest ven-ture — an enterprise designed to build sus-tainable tourism with a mutually beneficialexchange between visitors and the peopleand land they visit. Mr. Jones also operates

ANDY HASLAM FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Of Rivers and Rituals

CONTINUED ON PAGE 6

Touring Ethiopia’sOmo Valley, with

a sustainabletravel outfitter.

By ANDREW McCARTHY

EXPLORER

Sunset over the

Omo Valley. The

valley is largely dry

savanna, with the

Omo River cutting a

nearly 475-mile-long

swath down to Lake

Turkana on the

Kenya border.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2017

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6 TR THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2017

C M Y K Sxxx,2017-11-05,TR,006,Cs-4C,E1

TR 7THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2017

C M Y K Sxxx,2017-11-05,TR,007,Cs-4C,E1

the only permanent tented camp in the OmoValley, not far from Mr. Biwa’s village.

This southwestern corner of Ethiopia ishome to seven primary tribes who coexistwith varying degrees of peace. The land islargely dry savanna, with the Omo Rivercutting a nearly 475-mile-long swath downto Lake Turkana on the Kenya border. Thediscovery of human remains dating backnearly 2.5 million years prompted Unescoto dub the Lower Valley a World Heritagesite in 1980.

But today the Omo is a region on theprecipice. The Ethiopian government hasrecently completed the third of five pro-posed dams upriver. The dams threaten toalter the lives of the communities that haveinhabited this valley for millennium and de-pend on the river’s moods for survival.

“This was the second year in a row thatthe flood crop failed,” Mr. Jones told me. “Itis the only time anyone can remember thatthe river never rose.”

The area has also fallen victim to hit-and-run tourism — people driving down fromAddis Ababa, storming into villages, cam-eras blazing, then leaving in a cloud of dust.I encountered one such scrum at a local fes-tival. Witnessing the feverish pursuit fordocumentation of “otherness” reflectedback at me my own motives for being there.It is an issue every traveler to remote or in-digenous regions needs to reconcile.

“There is a circuit of exploitation here,”Mr. Jones told me. “It’s one of the reasonswe cultivate relationships with the localpeople, trading with them, trying to create amutually beneficial exchange. And it’s whywe’re primarily using the river as our road.The river allows us access to villages inac-cessible any other way.” In the six days wespent on the river we saw one other motor-ized boat — carrying supplies for an NGOdownriver.

With Mr. Biwa as our guide, we headed toa small village inhabited by the Hamar peo-ple. The Hamar, numbering 45,000 through-out the valley, are known to be pastoralists.The village was overflowing with cattle. Asin Dus, the dwellings were simple, built ofsticks and grass, and well ordered. Youngmen tended cattle while a woman skinnedand butchered a goat with the help of hertoddler, who hung pieces of the animal on afence beside an AK-47 and a belt of ammo.

“The AK-47 has replaced the spear,” Mr.Jones said.

Mr. Biwa nodded. “As long as you haveAK, you are respected,” he said. “Your fam-ily feels safe and proud. Someone with noAK, people look down on them. If you do nothave AK your family will go to someonewho does.”

They were American-made, I was told,gathered during the war in neighboring Su-dan.

But they are not cheap,” Mr. Biwa said.“How much do they cost?” I asked.“Five cows,” he said.Beside firearms, I witnessed few other

accommodations to the contemporaryworld in the Omo. Yet for a place so far offthe grid, news traveled fast throughout thevalley. While in the Hamar village we heardword of a nearby bull-jumping ceremony.The bull jump is a ritual initiation to man-hood for both the Hamar and Karo commu-nities. We headed east.

AT THE END of a long, deeply rutted road wecame upon a dusty village in the midst of acelebration. Old men and women gatheredin the shade. Young men painted their facesred and white. Young women were drapedin skirts and wore large bells wrappedaround their calves. Their hair was ornatelydone in rings caked with ochre-coloredmud. Each carried a small horn and blew itincessantly.

When one young woman turned awayfrom me I noticed fresh welts on her bareback, dripping blood; she seemed unawareand continued to dance. Then I saw her ap-proach a young man, stand close in front ofhim, and blow her horn in his face. She be-gan to jump up and down, her bells clang-ing, her horn blaring. The young man bentto the ground and picked up a long switchand raised it over his head. The womanblew her horn more insistently, then sud-denly stopped. She stared at the youngman. He struck her with the whip, whichsnapped around her body and lashed acrossher back with a sharp cracking sound. Shedid not flinch. She lifted her horn, blew it inhis face and danced away, fresh blood risingon her back. The same performance was re-peated again and again by many of theyoung women. Their backs were covered inold scars and new welts, yet none of themdisplayed any outward signs of pain.

As the sun was setting, a dozen bulls wereled to a clearing and aligned flank to flank.The women clustered together and beganjumping, their bells ringing out, their hornsblasting. Others began to chant. Suddenly anaked young man leapt up on the back ofthe first bull and raced across the spine ofeach. He jumped down after the last bull,but then he was up again, racing acrosstheir backs in the other direction. He re-peated the back-and-forth exercise threetimes. If he fell it would be a disgrace hewould carry for life, Mr. Biwa had warnedme. But the youth never faltered — the nextmorning he would awake a man, able to sitamong the elders.

The women continued to blow their hornsand the celebration continued on into thenight. We drove away under a moonless sky,the Southern Cross hanging low, silence fill-ing our car.

THE NEXT MORNING we headed up river to asmall village of the Nyangatom people. Re-lations between Karo and Nyangatom havelong been strained. Intertribal conflictsover cattle rustling and grazing land havekept the valley bristling with internal strifefor decades, passed down from generationto generation, Mr. Biwa said.

“Where we are going, this was our landuntil 15 years ago,” Mr. Biwa said as he throt-

tled our engine through the brown water.“The Nyangatom are fierce fighters. Theypushed us across the river. Our women tellus we are weak. Not just with their words.They dance — in front of everyone. It is ashame we wear.”

We passed large crocodiles cooling them-selves on the muddy banks, their jaws rest-ing open. Black-and-white colobus mon-keys leapt from branches of fig trees. A dug-out canoe sat unattended on the riverbank.A Goliath heron lumbered into the air.

In time the heavy foliage lining the riverthinned, then grew sparse. Thirty-foot cliffsbegan to rise up and the landscape turnedparched. Ahead, on the west bank, bony cat-tle were drinking from the river, kicking achoking dust high into the sky and acrossthe sun, casting everything in an eerie pati-

na. Atop the cliff, two men stood sentry. Onehad an AK-47 slung from his shoulder; theother wore what in a more urban settingmight have been called a hipster hat. Thetribes wore a mishmash of clothing —brightly colored traditional wraps, animalskins and adornments, mixed freely withChelsea football jerseys, rakish caps and fa-tigue shorts — creating an all too apt pictureof Africa’s disparate influences, all vying fordominance.

The men on the cliff greeted us withstares, and we set out across the arid land.Distant hills of Kenya were visible to thesouth. Three young girls with water jugsbalancing on their heads silently caught upwith us. One carried the designs of scarifica-tion — small, raised scars created by rub-bing charcoal in deliberately administered

cuts, causing the skin to welt in intricatepatterns. They made this two-mile walk toand from the river twice daily — in Africacarrying water is women’s work.

At the outskirts of the village, a half-doz-en expressionless men loitered. The tallestsported a vaguely military-looking beret,worn at a jaunty angle, and an AK-47. Therest held long sticks. Some wore rubbersandals made from scavenged truck ties;the others were barefoot.

Many Nyangatom are seminomadic andthis village appeared haphazardly throwntogether, as if built in a rush, without care.There was no central meeting area, nosense of organization. Children did not rushto greet us. We huddled with the men in thescant shade of a scraggly date tree. Ciga-rettes were passed around and smoked.

In time, more than a dozen womenemerged from the honeycomb-shapeddwellings that looked as if they could nei-ther contain nor shelter life. One old womanbegan to chant, then just as suddenlystopped. All wore heavy ropes of beadednecklaces piled high and were wrappedfrom the waist in once colorful cloth, andseveral held small children. Fatigue hung inthe blistering heat. It would have been diffi-cult to imagine daily life clinging closer tothe edge of existence.

“The cradle of mankind is no Garden ofEden,” Mr. Jones said softly as we trackedback cross the barren land to the boat.

Back down the river, the mood was morecelebratory — a ceremony was underway inDus. Two hundred men from Mr. Biwa’sKaro community were gathering in a large

semicircle on a bluff above the river. Seatingwas arranged from the youngest to themost senior elder. I was offered a spot in thedirt much too far along the timeline for myliking.

A bull was being roasted over an open firein the center of the gathering. Three menwith machetes hacked the animal to pieces.Chunks of meat and fat, clinging to largebones, were deposited onto small beds ofleaves before the assembled. A part of theanimal I couldn’t identify was dropped infront of me. The old man beside me withheavily pierced ears and a pointed stick pro-truding below his lower lip offered me hisknife. He watched as I sliced into the myste-rious blob, then grinned as I put it in mymouth. Just beyond the circle a dozenhooded vultures gathered.

When the entire animal had been con-sumed, one of the elders got up and began tospeak.

“He is making a prayer for the river torise,” Mr. Biwa told me.

“Don’t they know about the dam?” Iasked.

“It is a difficult thing to understand,” hesaid.

The elder kept talking as Mr. Biwa trans-lated. “And now is a prayer for rain. For thewomen and children. A prayer that all badfeelings be carried off across the river.” Af-ter each invocation the assembled replied ina deep, guttural moan.

Finally, the three men who had carved thebull sliced open the only remaining part ofthe animal. They reached in and producedglobs of warm dung and dispersed them.Each man began to spread the excrementover his legs and across his chest in a com-mitment to protect those they love.

Afterward, I slipped away. But hours lat-er, in the dusk, I walked back alone from ourcamp and entered the village again. As wasusually the case, a small child was the firstto greet me. The light was fading quickly, asit does near the Equator. A group of menhuddled near the Parliament and CeremonyHouse, but otherwise the village was quiet.The small boy shadowed me and I began tohear a loose kind of chanting. I turned to-ward the sound. There was a soft breeze inthe gloaming; the heat was finally off theday. Then the unmistakable register of anAK-47 rang out.

I leapt into the air. My head snapped in alldirections, looking for the origin of the gun-fire. Was I going to be shot as an intruder inthe night? My young companion laughed atme. He looked directly up into the sky, indi-cating the direction of the shot. I tried tosmile, and, more slowly now, continued to-ward the sound of the crowd. My smallfriend reached up and took my hand. Thevoices became more insistent. It was nearlydark. Then I heard it again — this time, arapid barrage of gunfire. Then another. Theboy smiled in reassurance. I dropped hishand and beat it back to the campsite.

The next morning, as we loaded the boatfor our trip farther downriver, I learned thata village elder had died suddenly and thegunfire had been part of the mourningprocess.

We set out before the heat of the day. Forseven hours heavy bush lined the banks.Occasionally children splashed in the croco-dile-infested water and villages were visi-ble through the foliage. Baboons scamperedup the steep banks. A rare Pel’s fishing owlswept overhead. At the dire river outpost ofOmorate, we had our passports inspected,paid the local graft and carried on.

“It’s a bit of a no man’s land from here toLake Turkana,” Mr. Jones told me.

The heavy bush yielded to a more openflood plane. Large villages of theDaasanach people, whom we had come tosee, began to line the river. These villagesdiffered from others we had seen in the bi-zarre-seeming platforms, 10 feet off theground, that had been constructed to storeand protect the sorghum crop from the an-nual flooding — flooding now in jeopardybecause of the damming upriver.

We set up camp on a high bank. The localvillagers assumed free run of our site andwe were absorbed into daily life. Dugout ca-noes, listing and overfull with people, wereconstantly crossing and recrossing theriver. Voices carried back and forth acrossthe water long after dark.

On an excursion farther downstream, theriver began to splinter. Dusty land gave wayto the high grass of the delta. Soon pelicansswarmed, then Lake Turkana was upon us.After the confines of life on the river, the ex-panse of the inland sea was daunting.

Here too, the environment is threatened.“It’s said Turkana could drop 20 feet withthe dam,” Mr. Jones said. “The effect on thedelta would be anyone’s guess.”

FROM FISHERMEN AT Turkana we learnedthat not far upstream, numerousDaasanach communities had begun togather for a Dimi ceremony. They had comefrom miles away for an event that happensonly every few years and lasts severalweeks — culminating in the act of femalecircumcision.

We left the boat and were immediatelyconfronted by two dozen teenage boys, eachwith a bow and arrow. After an initial stand-off, they happily showed us the sharp tips oftheir weapons. We carried on across landlittered with the bones of what I assumed tobe cattle, through heat so intense it was dif-ficult to breathe. The earth shimmered andhuts began to materialize on the horizon.

The Dimi gathering was in the earlystages; only a handful of families had ar-rived. Outside the temporary huts werepoles hung with leopard skin cloaks and os-trich plume hats for men, and colobus mon-key capes for women. The skin of severalpeople who came to greet us was alreadypainted yellow in preparation for the danc-ing that would accompany the coming cere-mony.

Back by the boat I encountered a manwith his entire chest and stomach coveredin the well-ordered markings of scarifica-tion.

“This is to indicate that he has killed inbattle,” Mr. Biwa explained.

The man glared at me. When I extendedmy hand to shake his, he broke into a tooth-some grin.

On our last evening, the sun was hazynear the horizon over Sudan. I walked intothe village behind our site, and then keptwalking to the next village, and the next.Children began to follow. Soon their num-bers were more than a hundred, the bolderones shook hands, some touched my hair —then ran away giggling. Eventually I beganto chase them — the boogeyman to their de-lighted screams — as the sun fell.

On the way back, on the outskirts of ourcampsite, I came upon an old man settingfire to a dead tree near a clearing. In themorning I told Mr. Biwa what I had seen.

“It was a prayer,” he said. “A prayer forthe river to rise.”

We climbed into our boat and headedback upstream on a river that was unlikelyto do so.

Of Rivers and Rituals in the Omo Valley

ES2 0 0 M I L ES

S O M A L I A

D J I B O U T I

S U D A N

Y E M E N

E T H I O P I A

oratateOmoo

DusDDus

O M O R I V E R R I V E

E T H I O P I AO PT H

K E N YAK

N O RT H OO M O O M

O U T H O M OS O UO U T O M

5 0 M I L ES

‘It’s an at-risk ecosystem, with at-risk communities.’

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

Right, a parliament

and ceremony house

in the village of Dus.

Below that, members

of the Karo tribe, left,

and Daasanach tribe,

right. Below that, the

Omo River.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY ANDY HASLAM FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

THE NEW YORK TIMES

From top: a Karo boy

painted in preparation

of a ceremony;

scarification and

colored beads on a

Daasanach woman;

and a Kara

tribeswoman working

the fields near

Lumale.From near right,

Karo people

guarding their

village; a Hamar

bull-jumping

ceremony in Turmi;

and tribesmen

preparing for the

ceremony.

ANDREW McCARTHY is the author of the young

adult novel “Just Fly Away” and the travel

memoir “The Longest Way Home.”

EXPLORER ETHIOPIA