![]() ![]() ©Hans Silvester.īoys usually paint one another. Mursi woman used to commonly pierce and stretch their lower lip for a plate, but that tradition is fast fading. Both men and woman pierce their ears for discs. ![]() The Mursi have a long history of body painting, decorative scarring and piercing. Most all the following pictures were taken by Hans Silvester who over three years visited nine times with the Mursi and Surma Tribes of the Omo Valley. Colors are used to designate position, for ritual, to ward off illness, to attract the opposite sex, to associate with family, a tribe or an animal, and of course just recently, to impress tourists. The young men have the responsibility of grazing the cattle and they have long slathered on clay to prevent sunburn. ![]() Many are agro-pastoralists who live close to the river or lake during the dry season but return to the grasslands when the rains come. ![]() In the Lower Omo Valley of southwest Ethiopia, eastern South Sudan and around Lake Turkana in north Kenya reside over 500,000 indigenous, tribal people. In the remote Omo valley in Africa, where the earliest known Homo sapiens remains have been found, indigenous tribes have been painting their bodies with pulverized minerals for millenia. Imagine growing up without artwork on the walls, minimal paper and no pens but surrounded by bodies, nature, colored minerals and all sorts of animals with amazing designs. ![]()
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