Travel to Ethiopia, discovering rites of passage

Theapproach, for us "white people," to this event, has a Carbonara conspiracy flavor. Even our local guide is groping in the dark. We know that somewhere here, in this area of the Omo Valley in the deep south of Ethiopia, just a few miles from the border with Kenya, to the south, and Sudan, to the west, a few days from now one of the rites of initiation into adulthood of which all of Africa is full. Rites that change according to country and ethnicity but also tribes, albeit a few kilometers apart. While we know it will take place somewhere soon, we have no confirmation that the news is true, nor when or where. In short, it seems to be a poorly kept secret, but a secret nonetheless. Suddenly, however, magically something unlocks and our guide now has a smile lighting up his face. Now he knows.

We follow it, first by 4WD and then on foot through Dimeka, a village of the Hamer tribe. We pass over to continue through the vegetation and arrive at a riverbed, just below, that flows brown and turbulent. It must be a dry spell because the murky waters run in a narrow central channel while we notice how the now dry banks, on which we now stop, are much wider. During the rainy season the river must be really scary.

This ritual that takes place among the Hamer, a tribe devoted primarily to pastoralism, is something we had heard about often both before we arrived in the Omo Valley and when we were already in the area. The proof is the jumping of the bulls or, in the local language "Ukli Bulà." The practice of "taurocatapsia," as bull jumping is called in "technical" jargon, has been around the world since the Bronze Age. There are examples in Minoan Crete, in India among the Tamils, in Anatolia among the Hittites. In modern-day Europe, we find it in southwestern France where every summer it is possible to witness the beautiful "course camarguaise," a kind of bloodless bullfighting where the aim is to remove a rosette placed between the horns of the bullock, actually a young castrated ox.
Here, in the Omo Valley, this practice represents the passage through which each boy enters the adult world. This test of courage and skill gives him the right, if successfully passed, to marry, own cattle and have children. A lineup of bulls, although they are actually young steers, is lined up and held in place by the Maza, men who have already passed the test but are still bachelors. These young adults act as "godfathers" for the boy and take care of all the preparations before the test. To become a man the young man, completely naked except for a vegetable rope around his chest to symbolize the childhood to be abandoned, must run at least four times over the backs of the bulls. If he can do this, without falling and without helping himself with his hands, he will have passed the test and will officially be part of the adults.

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