Hamar women are extremely beautiful. Everybody in Ethiopia knows them and everybody talks about them. Hamars live at the lower Omo River. Hamars originated as mixture of different tribes used to be living there.
Women dress is usually very fancy. They are decorated by heavy metal bracelets, coral necklaces and shell wristlets. The traditional dress is made from sheep and goat skin. They often use red soil mixed with butter to make hair braids. The richer woman is the more butter she uses. They sometimes wear aluminum shades kalles. Married women wear heavy metal ring as necklace called bignere. Very popular are ringed metal bangles. Men are making chic hairstyles, often decorated by ostrich plume. Every men, anywhere he is going, is wearing small wooden chair, which can be used as both chair and as a pillow. In these days, Hamars often own Kalashnikov, even if it’s not so popular as for Mursi.
Hamars are outstanding dancers. They have many traditional dances, for every celebration events and happenings. Hamars as the other surrounding tribes like Karo, Banna and Tsamai have an initiated ritual for boy’s maturity celebration - jumping of the Bull. They gather a large number of bulls to a line and a boy who should be accepted as a man has to run over their backs four times without falling down. It’s one of the most important rituals. The boy is allowed to fell down just once. If he fell down more times, he could never be accepted as a man anymore. During the celebration, all women relatives are whipped to show their love and loyalty to the boy. They often have huge scares at their back the whole life.
Hamars are the most populated tribe in the Omo River area. The number of Hamar people is estimated to 30,000. Hamars are mostly herdsmen. They are usually keeping sheep and goats, because it’s easier than cattle, but you can sometimes see Hamars with large cow and bull heard. They are aesthetes, they even decorates cattle lop-ears.
Hamars live at the lower Omo River around Turmi village, 400km south of Addis Ababa.
