Mursi woman
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Mursi woman
Lifestyle
The Mursi tribe lives in an extremely inaccessible area, between the Mago and Omo rivers. The main occupation of the Mursi is cattle breeding, but gradually they begin to grow more and more useful plants.
Mursi women's work
The Mursi are considered one of the richest tribes in the region, which is determined by the number of livestock. By and large, every important social act is concluded here with the help of cattle, for example, in order to marry a girl, the groom’s family pays the bride’s father “dauri” - as a rule, this is 30-40 heads of cattle and a gun. This tradition is typical for all Omo tribes, and that is why girls born here are considered a good guarantee of the family’s well-being.
Mursi woman
Women do most of the heavy lifting: they are responsible for building houses, caring for children, preparing food, and fetching water to the village from the nearest spring or river bed. The men of the Mursi tribe are herders and are busy grazing and guarding the village. Men also have the responsibility of protecting the village in the event of tribal conflicts.
Diet
The main food of the Mursi is dry porridge prepared from ground maize or sorghum. Sometimes milk and animal blood are added to it, taken fresh directly from the wound on the cow’s neck (the animal is not killed), or already collected earlier and stored in calabashes. Mursi meat is practically not eaten, being consumed only on major holidays.
Appearance
Mursi men
The Mursi are tall and skinny, with a reputation for being aggressive and skilled in local martial arts.
Mursi women are easily identified and are known for the huge ceramic plates they insert into their lower lips. There is much debate as to why the Mursi practice this ritual, and, apparently, its roots go back several centuries to when the tribe was forced to disfigure its women so that they would not be driven off to slave markets. Gradually, this tradition changed its meaning, and today the larger the plate in the Mursi’s lip, the more beautiful it is considered and respected by her husband and tribe.
Mursi lower lip piercing done young girls who have reached 12-13 years of age. First, a small wooden washer is inserted into the lip, the size of which is gradually increased, stretching the woman’s lip, and then replaced with ceramic saucers. In order to insert it into a girl’s lip, her lower teeth are knocked out.
It is a mistake to believe that the Mursi constantly walk around with huge plates in their lips - they are too heavy and uncomfortable. Women of the tribe insert them only during important events such as receiving guests, serving food to their husbands, holidays, etc. The rest of the time, Mursi takes the plate out of his mouth.
Scarring is another common decoration among the Mursi. Men put scars on their left shoulder to show that they have reached the age of marriage and have become full-fledged warriors. Women decorate their chests with patterns of scars for beauty.
Women also wear a lot of jewelry, mostly metal bracelets, while men may wear bracelets made from tusks and hair from the Mago elephant.
Both men and women of the Mursi tribe cut their hair short, shave their skulls in a variety of patterns and use a variety of designs.
The traditional clothing of the Mursi has always been goat skins, but recently more and more Mursi have been dressing in lighter cotton capes, which are bought in the markets. Today, all men tie colorful fabrics around their hips; Mursi women can still be found wearing clothes made from skins, but they also prefer to use fabrics more and more.
Faktrum publishes an answer to this question from a historian and professional traveler Inna Metelskaya-Sheremeteva.
“When we were going to Ethiopia for the first time, we, of course, read heartbreaking information about the ominous Mursi tribe in all sorts of geographical magazines. What is not attributed to them: witchcraft, increased aggressiveness, cannibalism, and other wild customs with self-mutilation. And as an argument, the authors of these articles always present tribal women with their plates inserted into their lower lips and men whose bodies are covered with scars - notches in honor of killed enemies. I will immediately disappoint you. Modern Mursi are completely adapted to commodity-market conditions relationships people, which live, in fact, thanks to legends and visits from numerous tourists.
Photo source: Moya-planeta.ru
Although some of the old traditions and rituals remain. First of all, the same notorious debi plate (the diameter of our dessert plate), which to this day is inserted into the lower lip of some women. It looks strange and scary. But I tried to get to the bottom of the tradition and, it seems to me, I found the answer. This self-mutilation is an attempt to protect oneself from slavery, which has nothing to do with spirits or rituals. The fact that it has become a fashion and business card Mursi at some stage of the historical process is a whim and an irony of fate.
A long time ago, parents, to prevent their daughter from being sold into slavery, tried to disfigure her as much as possible. She had her hair shaved, scarred, and had her lip (among the Mursi) or ears (among the Maasai) pierced. Wooden plugs were inserted into the holes, the diameter of which was constantly increased. The girl eventually turned into a scarecrow with a bald head, removed upper and lower incisors and a tray above her chin.
But even today, Mursi (those who pose for tourists for money) manage to insert a plate of unfired clay into their lips, and Maasai and Maasai stuff a cola bottle or even a saucer into their ear.
How do they eat, you ask? Of course taking out the plate. At the same time, the lip hangs with a grayish-brown unpleasant flagellum, a skin, so women eat only when no one sees them, placing maize porridge and other simple food with their fingers deep into the depths of their toothless mouth ... "
Appearance
Both men and women of the Mursi tribe cut their hair short, shave their skulls in a variety of patterns and use a variety of designs.
The traditional clothing of the Mursi has always been goat skins, but recently more and more Mursi have been dressing in lighter cotton capes, which are bought in the markets. Today, all men tie colorful fabrics around their hips; Mursi women can still be found wearing clothes made from skins, but they also prefer to use fabrics more and more.
Mursi men are known for brutal stick fighting. And women wear a plate in the lower lip, shaped like a clay saucer. Disk size depends on social status girl, and, as a rule, indicates the number of livestock that the family hopes to receive by marrying her off. Even at a young age, girls cut part of their lower lip and begin to insert wooden discs, constantly enlarging them to large enough sizes until they replace them with clay “debi” on their wedding day. In this case, part of the lower teeth is knocked out.
The culture and traditions of each tribe are peculiar and unique in their own way. Take, for example, the Korowai tribe from New Guinea, whose inhabitants build their homes in trees at an altitude of 20 to 50 m, and also practice cannibalism. In the highlands of Papua - the same New Guinea - lives the Baruya tribe, which until the 20th century was isolated from the rest of the world. Baruya society is highly patriarchal and is built around the myth that all things are created from sperm. Women in this tribe are considered “rejected” people and do not have any rights. Boys, from the age of 8, are separated from their mothers and raised separately until they are 20 years old. Women of the North Australian Tiwi tribe are married at birth. Also interesting is the wedding custom of the tribe that lives in the rocky areas of the Atlantic coast. A man who wants to get married must stand on a cliff all night, alternately on his left and then on his right leg. And a bright Indian custom obliged the bride on her wedding night to give herself not only to the groom, but also to all willing guests. It is curious that in one Indian tribe in North America, the mother-in-law does not have the right to see her son-in-law from the wedding day until her last days.
There are quite a lot of such tribes, amazing in their way of life, but the Mursi tribe is of the greatest interest. Let's look at it in more detail.
Mursi tribe
Ethiopia is home to one of the most unusual tribes in the world, numbering 6,000 people - the Mursi. They are considered the most aggressive ethnic group. All the men carry Kalashnikov assault rifles, which are given to them illegally across the border. In addition, they start drinking in the morning, and, closer to lunch, they become uncontrollable.
Those warriors of the tribe who did not receive machine guns, or who simply left them in their homes, carry sticks with them. With the help of these sticks they prove their leadership. The one who claims it must beat his competitors half to death.
This tribe probably belongs to the mutants of the Negroid race, because its appearance is significantly different from the usual standards of beauty. Both men and women are short, big-boned and bow-legged. Low foreheads, flattened noses, short necks. The bodies are flabby and sickly in appearance, with sagging bellies and hunched backs. There is almost no hair on their heads, and therefore all Mursi women constantly wear intricate headdresses of complex design, made from branches, rough skins, swamp shellfish, dried fruits, dead insects, someone's tails and some kind of stinking carrion. Their wrinkled, chewed faces, with small, narrow-set eyes, have an extremely angry and wary appearance.
The unique facial "decoration" they use is completely unusual, even for wild people. The fact is that even at a young age, their girls’ lower lips are cut, and wooden blocks of larger and larger diameters begin to be inserted there.
Over several years, the hole in the lip gradually grows larger and larger. On the wedding day, a “plate” made of baked clay, called debi, is inserted into it, the purpose of which will be discussed later. The diameter of such a vessel in the lip can reach 30 centimeters, exceeding the diameter of the head itself! True, the tradition of wearing plates did not appear out of beauty, rather the opposite.
When the Ethiopians were captured and taken into slavery, they forcibly mutilated themselves so that they would not be taken. Now the size of the plate is a measure of beauty. The larger the plate, the more cattle they will give for the bride. Mursi girls always have a choice whether to make a hole in their lip or not. But for a girl without a stretched lip they give a very small ransom.
If such a plate is pulled out, the outer edge of the lip under the hole hangs down by 10-15 cm in the form of a kind of round rope. Many Mursi do not have front teeth, so that the plate does not knock on the front teeth, and the tip of a cracked, bleeding tongue constantly sticks out in this gap, like a rotten sting.
Mursi women also have other, no less strange and creepy jewelry, hanging on their flattened necks. These are monists, collected from the bones of the nail phalanges of human fingers, called nek. Normally, an ordinary person has 28 such bones. Each of them required at least four to six hands. In addition, some “ladies” have several of these, terrifying-looking necklaces. They shine greasyly and emit a sweet, rancid smell - they rub each monist bone with rendered human fat every day.
They begin to develop there, but the body, entering into a fight with the aliens, encloses the “strangers” with its connective tissue and they eventually die, leaving their own grave nodules under the skin, varying in size and shape. Knowing this, the Mursi deliberately alternate the places of their introduction among themselves, depending on the final “pattern” on the skin that they want to obtain. For almost any offense, the priestess of the tribe cuts off the hands of the man who violated the laws (neks immediately come to mind here).
According to the traditions of this mystical tribe, all its women are Priestesses of Death. In the evenings, in their hut, they first prepare some kind of relatively light narcotic potion by grinding the dried fruits of a special bog nut into powder. Having poured it onto a debi plate stuck into her lip, each woman brings the narcotic dish closer to her husband’s lips and they both begin to lick it off at the same time (while the wife sticks her tongue out through the hole between her teeth). This part of the ritual is called the “kiss of death.” By the way, they don’t use the usual way of kissing for us at all.
Then, a bunch of some intoxicating grass is thrown into the smoldering hearth, which begins to emit upward streams of yellowish smoke. The man climbs onto the “mezzanine” poles and lies over the fireplace so that the streams of sweet incense rise directly to his face. He lies down not just like that, but by placing his head on the recess of a special pillow stand. This small thing, shaped like a coil, is called brkuta and is made from the wood of a secret plant. About two dozen of these amazing sleeping devices are kept in the hut of the High Priestess of the tribe, called Srek.
Srek rubs each of them with one of his many potions and casts a special individual spell. As a result, each brkuta becomes the bearer of some very specific dream! It could be a “film” about a successful hunt, or a night of love, about delicious gluttony, or a victorious battle with enemies, etc. At the husband's request, his wife brings him a wooden headrest every evening with the vision he wants to see before his possible death. This part of the ritual is called the “sleep of death” and this name is not at all accidental. While the man dreams sweetly in the smoke of dope, his wife prepares to give him poison.
The High Priestess of the tribe prepares this deadly powder from the very lower teeth pulled out from women, infusing them with a complex potion of nine herbs growing on the hummocks of the dead swamps of Lotagipi. After some time, the Mursi woman rises to her sleeping husband and blows deadly powder into his mouth from her lip plate. This part of the mystical rite is called the “bite of death.” But the passions don't end there. Having poisoned their husbands, all the Priestesses of Death gather in the Srek hut and perform some mysterious ritual there.
The ominous ritual ends with an action that we call “the roulette of death,” and the Mursi themselves call it “the gift of death.” The High Priestess walked around all the huts of the village, rising to the poisoned men and putting a life-saving antidote in their mouths, portions of which are in her necklace, which adorns her complex “hairstyle.” And no one except her and the God of Death Yamda, whose will the High Priestess carried out, knows: all the men of the tribe were ordered to live on, or not all of them. There were times when Srek did not give one of them the antidote. Then she, leaving the hut, draws a white cross on his wife’s death plate. Such a woman remained a widow for the rest of her life and was highly respected in the tribe, as a priestess who had fulfilled her duty to the almighty Yamda.
After natural death, the bodies of such widows are placed in the stump of a hollow trunk and hung on the branches of special trees. The bodies of all other tribesmen, both men and women, are boiled down. Soft tissues and broth are used for food, all sorts of potions and amulets. With the skeletons of my fellow tribesmen, the Mursi lay out their secret paths in dangerous swamps so as not to fall through.
However, what may seem savage to us is good for the natives. The Mursi tribe are servants of the God of Death. Their faith says that the bodies of Mursi men (earthly flesh) are a kind of ritual “prison” of God Yamda, in which he imprisons the Souls of his assistants - the Demons of Death, in case of any disobedience. And the white stripes with which the body is painted symbolize the shackles of the flesh, temporarily restraining the rebellious Spirit.
Methodically killing the flesh of men by systematically giving them narcotic poison, women priestesses seem to destroy these physical earthly shackles, bringing closer the hour of liberation for the higher spiritual Beings languishing in them. They themselves are simple Spirits of Darkness, sent here to perform mystical ritual rites and those who have the right will return to their Lord - only after the natural death of the resulting body. Good does not exist without evil, light without darkness, and life without death. And each person in his earthly life serves one of the opposing forces, fulfilling the destiny given to him by the Creator. And it is not for us to judge whose path and faith is more correct. The ancient Mursi tribe is simply doing its duty.
The Mursi man is a warrior to the core. Without a machine gun, he will not take a step outside the village, although he is under the influence of psychotropic drugs around the clock and, it would seem, could relax.
The Mursi worship the demon of death, which, according to them, lies within each of them.
The Mursi live in South Omo in Ethiopia. Their neighbors consider them the most bloodthirsty killers in all of Africa. Their neighbors are also not gifts - for example, athletes of the Surma tribe beat each other to death with sticks - but compared to the background of the Mursi, they are peace-loving.
The head of a woman from the Mursi tribe resembles a medieval fortress. The mouth is like a fortress gate with a palisade of teeth, a folding bridge of the lower lip, a wary tongue at the entrance and gate services. The loophole eyes seem to look very unkindly.
The stretching of a Murcian woman's lip is part of the mating ritual. It is natural that its meaning is not obvious to outsiders.
Mursi piercing is voluntary. If your lip is not pierced, it means you are getting married early.
A woman has the right to live until old age without a hole in her lip, without family, wealth and respect from others.
When a girl reaches maturity, her lower lip is pierced and a small twig is inserted into the hole. Then the twig is replaced with a cork and so on - the technology for making “tunnels” is also known to us. When it’s time for the real labial disc, the beauty’s four lower front teeth are removed.
When the lip cracks and bleeds, it is coated with special healing potions. Stronger muscle fibers and connective tissue grow at the site of the rupture.
As the Mursi woman approaches perfection, she significantly loses the ability to speak and facial expressions.
The Mursi do not have antiseptics, but since childhood they have had the strongest immunity against any infection. Bumps on the skin are healed larvae of various insects. They are gradually, one by one, introduced under the skin, they live and develop there for some time, until the Murcian’s body, in a fierce struggle, seals them forever.
This is the Murcian analogue of the Mantoux reaction. Every scar is a defeated tropical disease. A pattern of such scars is a certificate of completion of a course of vaccinations and a diploma primary school survival, giving a ticket to adult life, that is, a referral for piercing.
The bride's price is determined based on the length of her lower lip, thickness, density and mobility. The most persistent young ladies train to achieve champion lip ring diameters, inflating their prices to the skies.
It is important for the girl not to overdo it, so as not to fall into that segment of the market where only the wealthiest Murcian warriors operate, and not to narrow the circle of buyers too much.
A warrior is supposed to choose such an important commodity as a wife meticulously.
A luxury wife is someone whose both lips are stretched. Even the most ambitious Murcian woman will rarely dare to do such a trick, because it will be difficult to eat.
A disc in the lip indicates that the woman is busy, and a married Murcian woman never goes out without a disc. A free Mursi woman can walk without it. A disc often taken out in public indicates that the woman can be outbid at the moment.
A good wife can cost 10 cows, and wealthy people can have ten wives. The Murcian builds a separate hut for each of them and indulges in traditions with them in turn.
Over the past few decades, conflicts have continued between the Dutch organization African Parks Network, Ethiopia and local tribes. In 2008, Mursi warriors arbitrarily declared their land a nature reserve and tourist area. They liked showing women to photographers for money, and they want to do it officially.
The Dutch said that they could not work given the “irresponsible lifestyle of some ethnic groups” and left.
There are few tribes left in Africa that practice body plastic surgery, but the ancient Mursi tradition of stretching women’s lips is no longer threatened.
