BY MULUGETA GUDETA
There is not much information written about the Hamer people but the Wikipedia or online encyclopedia defines Hamer as an Omotic community inhabiting southwestern Ethiopia.
They live in Hamer woreda or district a fertile part of the Omo River valley in Debub Omo Zone. They are mostly pastoralists so that their culture places high value on cattle.
Writing about the natural environment, a brochure by a travel agency called Passion Ethiopia Tours, describes the Omo valley zone as “a poisonous paradise…the landscape is beautiful but climatic conditions are simply too hot and dry to be conducive to good health and longevity.
The Omo valley may have a rough environment but it is rich in cultures and rituals. Not to surprisingly, people over 45 are a rarity in these parts. One of the most fascinating cultural rituals of the Hamer people is what is called “Bull Jumping”, If a young man wants to marry a girl of his choice, he will have to jump over bulls picked by the girl’s family.
He is required to jump over them four times: two times in each direction. He is assisted by friends , who are called the ‘maz’ meaning those who have successfully performed the jumping ritual last year.
They hold the cattle to prevent the jumper from falling. If the jumper falls, it is considered bad chance and he will have another chance next year, The wing is often accused of being the cause of their failure the first time. If he succeeds the following year, he may keep the girl in exchange of cattle given to her family.
For two months, the betrothed couple will share blood and milk, blood from the cow’s neck is mixed with milk and drank. A wealthy and strong man can marry up to four women.
According to information published by “National Parks Safaris Ethiopia”, cattle raiding is another important tradition of the Hamer.
“From time to time, a man will go on raids to take food , cattle and or the weapons and ammunitions of a man he kills and more importantly, this will give them status. After a kill the man returns to the village where he is welcomed as a hero and is entitled to scarification, one line for each for each killing performed.
Hamer women have also artistic scars, some women before marriage, others after. To protect their hairdos , men always carry a ‘borkoto’, a wooden headset for a pillow.
Married women wear iron rings around their necks and also they decorate themselves with shells, glass, seeds and metal beads.Iron rings, necklaces, tools, weapons and objects are by the blacksmith or ‘gito’ who are shaman-like figures, believed to have the power of the evil eye. They are also the “makers” of men and women through the scarification tools and ornaments they make.
Not much was known about the Hamer people until very recently because of their remote location and their peripheral role in Ethiopian cultural development. Some foreigners have written about them but they are few in numbers and their works are largely unknown by the public.
Domestic interest in the Hamer people is a relatively recent phenomenon. Interest about the Hamer communities started when the government gave attention to the minority communities in the south as part of the general policy of respecting the culture, language and traditions of neglected communities.
Some ethnographical researches were conducted by academicians while philologists had also tried to identify and study the linguistic affinity of the Hamer ethnic group. Those researches were not however widely available to the general public.
The Hamer entered the nation’s imagination after the publication of the award-winning novel by Fikremarkos Desta entitled “Beyond Buska”. The book was the first of its kind in terms of setting the story against the background of a little-known southern ethnic group although there are ordinary themes like love and courage and violence that are part of the narrative.
It is the first novel to portray the lives, cultures and traditions of the Hamer people that were little known by the general reader. This novelty could catch the imagination of the readers as soon as it was published and became popular.
An English version of the book was subsequently published and the translator in Amharic is none other than the anthropologist Alula Pankhurst, the son of the late Richard Pankhurst who was an acclaimed academician and expert in Ethiopian history and culture. This has also added to the popularity of the book that was acclaimed by readers, critics and academics.
Assistant Professor Zerihun Asfaw, who is also a literary critic called kebuseka bestejerba or “Beyond the Horizon”, an ethnographical work of fiction whereby the authors combined ethnographical elements into the story which is basically a work of imagination. He commended the book as an original work of fiction and his recommendations were central to the fact that the book won the literary prize.
From the point of view of literary criticism, Buska’s story line is about love or the quest for love by youngsters or the love and marriage culture of the Hamer people and the rituals involved in the process of choosing and marrying young girls.
Since this is not a review of the novel, I will not go into it in detail. However, more than any work of ethnography, the novel vividly portrays the lives and traditions of the Hamer people as well as their belief system.
The author has also dealt with the Hamer tradition or ritual of bull jumping in a book called “Land of the Yellow Bull” which a critic compared with Chinua Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart”, particularly in its description of the traditional lives of th eheroes. The difference is that Buska is not apolitical novel while “Things Fall Apart” has a political theme, namely the conflict between tradition and modernity and the resulting conflicts and outcomes between the two.
A brief description of ethnography would suggest that it is “the scientific description of peoples and cultures with their customs, habits and mutual difference.” A more elaborate definition of the term is given as “a specific kind of written observational science which provides an account of a particular culture, society or community.
The fieldwork usually involves spending a year or more in another society, living with the local people and learning about their ways of life.” From the above definition we can deduce that Buska is not about ethnography or historiography but about the fictional account of an ancient ethnic group and their cultures.
Fikremarkos spent not only a year but many years observing the Hamer people and wrote the book in fictional form because that was the best medium for him to capture and immortalize the cultures and traditions of the people of Hamer who will certainly continue to inspire many more writers in the future.
The author used the ethnographic aspect of the book as a background for setting his story. In this sense, the book can be read at two levels, namely at the level of literature and at the level of ethnography. It is up to the readers to decide which one they enjoy or appreciate.
In fact, it would be a disservice to try to describe the culture, traditions and rituals of the Hamer people in the space of such a short newspaper article. Even a book would be insufficient to describe the breadth and depth of the community lives of the Hamer people.
The Ethiopian herald December 19/2020
